Spring Books

Well, I have obviously failed in my initial goal to do a monthly reading review. How about we try for seasonal instead.

The books I read this spring (March to May):

Fun ones:

So fun and heartwarming and life-affirming.

 Fascinating in many ways, and raises good questions about how cultures clash and people assimilate.

Lovely.

Quick, fun. Just what I needed it to be.

I' had been looking forward to this one. Kept me reading, I really liked her writing.

If she writes it, I'll read it.

Like the podcast, but written out.

Ones for book club:

Sweeping saga, layered and emotional.

Talk about emotional--this one is intense, but in some really good ways.

So glad I read this.

Beautiful prose, can't wait to discuss it.

I made this little thing to help give me a visual of the books of 2019.

 It's quite rewarding to color one in when I finish it.

 As far as the number of titles I'm wanting to finish this year, I'm doing just fine. My goal was to read 27 books (one more than last year), and it is June and I have already read 26. But the specific list of particular books I'm wanting to finish this year is full of lengthy titles. It includes: East of Eden, A Prayer for Owen Meany, The Shell Seekers, This Must Be the Place, and the ever-daunting, Middlemarch. With several shorter ones sprinkled in. Why, oh why, have I saved them all for the last six months?  Oh well. I can always start on the list for 2020.

Because I am lazy and fickle, I will go ahead and list the books I read in June. I'm hoping to finish Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson as well. 

I can't figure out how I feel about Patchett's writing. I think what she intends as lightness, I take seriously. She writes about situations that would normally stress me out, and I think in my own anxiety, I miss the light-heartedness that she attempts to inject into the situation. But that same lightness is probably what makes me not connect with the characters as much as I normally would. They seem slightly unrelatable. In both Bel Canto and State of Wonder, I felt apathy for almost all of the characters. 

Guys, I gotta be honest. I didn't love this one. I fully expected to after all the rave reviews I've heard. But, I feel about this book the way I feel about sushi--what's the hype? I mean, it's fine. I guess.

 It wasn't the writing that was the problem, and the characters were plenty believable, I think I just saw more potential either in plot or character development and so I felt like there were roads left untraveled.

If you want introspection + major internal character development, this is your book.

Purple Hibiscus was a heavy read for me. I almost put it down twice because of content. But I am so glad I finished it. I tend to love novels that play on religious tropes and subvert our ideas of right and wrong or good and evil. This book is more overt, but I would compare it to The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver or Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks, two of my most favorites.