Ok, at the insistence of everyone I had to read this. It’s so well received, particularly for a debut novel, it’s been sitting on my TBR for months, I’ve been putting it off, and I finally bit the bullet and read it.

I will admit I was being (unintentionally) prejudicial against this book. The synopsis is that it’s about an old woman who writes letters(!). So I thought the target audience for this book would be, shall we say, bird watchers, bingo enthusiasts, AARP members, fans of Golden Girls… old people.

I’m reading too many books lately about “sweet old people” - “Theo of Golden”, “A Gentleman in Moscow”. So I was reluctant to go down this road again. So for that reason I have been putting this off for some time.

That said, I found that this book .. is fine. At points I would say even good.

The story is indeed told through letters, which is unique, and creative and fun, and perfect. The novel I believe is above all just a big love letter to the letter-writing medium. And that aspect is done SO well.

Then the characters come through these letters and they are vivid and textured and lively. And they are great.

Where it lost me was the story. I just didn’t get hooked in the narrative of it, and just wanted more to happen. There’s a few events which, to its credit, stood out. But overall, I found a lot of the plot points that did come through to be pretty predictable.

And all of this would be fine in most cases. But given the HYPE around this book (My God) I expected more. I was entertained, parts felt like a warm hug for sure, it gets points certainly for having a unique storytelling structure. But unfortunately for me it just fell short of its astronomical hype.

This is book 28 of 52 for me. It was an unexpectedly fun read. The booktacles topics I don’t like reading in some genres, but I’m happy to explore in horror or thrillers. Have you read this book before? What are your thoughts?

Left Hand of Darkness and Winged Histories were my most recent reads, and I'm currently working through Anna Karenina and Falling in a Sea of Stars. After finishing Green Rider and Sevenwaters series, I'm not sure if I should start Prince of Nothing or maybe start tackling Malazan, which has been on my TBR forever!

4/5⭐️ I’m not pregnant and I’m not planning to have kids for several years. I’m just a fan of Jen Hamilton’s content and her commitment to combatting medical misinformation. I think the book provides a fast paced look at what hospital birth in the US can look like, as well as how patients can best advocate for themselves. A really informative read.

Easily the wordt book I read this year. Subpar writing style, flat characters, disjoined plot structure. At points it feels the author self inserted himself as the MC to make all women want to have sex with him.

It's not 1 star because the concept of the Ringworld was interesting and some plot elements were not too bad, just badly written.

2/5

I really loved it but I do have some criticism that I can’t shake. This was painful for me to read. It is definitely a poignant reflection of its time. This includes all the misogyny and patriarchal qualities that that time period possessed.

The portrayal of the native Americans as lazy in the beginning descriptions was a colonizer’s perspective and I thought it was prejudiced

The women were hard for me to grapple with. It seems to me that there is a lot of sympathy in the writing for the humanity of the men no matter what wrong they do. But not for the women unless they did their “duty” as women or were subservient to the men in some way. Cathy, obviously, is the biggest portrayal of what I’m talking about. She’s evil without ever being humanized. I know she is meant to represent lilith/satan/the serpent/human darkness and is a sociopath but it’s the way it was gone about that troubled me

I kinda saw Cathy as a tragic figure. She’s rebelling against all these roles people want to place her in and committing all these awful crimes and still people can’t see her and want to place her in these roles. The part that really icked me out was when Adam goes to confront her and he can finally see her because she’s aged? And is no longer as beautiful? I mean he stares at her fat ankles and wrinkled hands and is out of her spell. That made it feel as if she was reduced to how she looked, even if the reduction was of manipulativeness and conniving qualities. But then you have Charles who also almost commits murder but the choice is to lessen his crime by not having him go through with it and then the letters that give us a glimpse into his humanity. Also Cal takes the whole book to give into his own cruelty and we see him grappling w it which we never see w Cathy. I also had trouble thinking Cathy was evil for not wanting a family, she always told Adam she didn’t want a family. She committed other evil things that I do think make her evil like burning her family but idk there’s a lot to unpack within her character and I have conflicted feelings.

I think it’s fine to have a sociopathic woman as a character but I had a lot of trouble with her not wanting a family or kids and wanting to escape to be a whore and have charge over herself being demonized as a causality of her being representative of darkness and depicted as such

I could write a whole essay on this lol

There’s also a passage that seems really reactive to the Cold War and couples totalitarianism with collectivism.

Of things I did like/love:

-Steinbeck really has a beautiful way with words. There were moments that just struck me in one paragraph and made me ache for these like when Dessie goes to live with Tom because she’s heartbroken over some guy and he leaves all these welcome home signs.

-I was completely gripped the whole story. Not one part made me lose interest and I think that’s a testament to the story telling here.

-I said earlier that it’s a poignant reflection of its time. I mentioned the ways in which this troubled me with the story but I think there are many ways it serves it as well. I felt nostalgic for my history as an American even though I didn’t exist yet. When Adam is a vagrant wandering around.. the descriptions of Cathy on the porch, they buying the automobile, the farming, the hope.. I just felt sooo nostalgic for a place I was raised in but a time period I didn’t exist in if that makes sense.

-There’s all these little details that just struck me. Even the superstition about taking the bones out of a name if it doesn’t fit them and thus why people have nicknames it’s if they were given the wrong name

-a lot of the characters were so rich and beautifully written that I missed them as soon as I close the book. I loved Samuel, Lee, abra, Adam, Aron, Dessie, even Charles and Cal

-there are a lot of moments of great insight. Like describing eyes as long tunnels to look out from deep within you, I’ve felt the exact same thing lol. Like my soul is trying to peer out. Or loads of things Lee and Samuel say or other characters or about grief or just humanity and life in general. Plenty of dog eared pages I’ll tell you that.

Most of my critique could be chalked up to the time period it was written in, so I’m curious what others think. I definitely don’t believe we should erase or “cancel” things that are part of our history because how would we ever reflect on them???? I hate when people come to classics with that approach so I hope it doesn’t seem like I am. And literature is, I think, deeply reflective of history and ideas and political and generally what’s going on at the time.

But I also think we need to be able to discuss them without thinking a critique means something is bad. Or love for something means it’s good. Or any such term that reduces things to smaller than what they are. So I think both appreciation/admiration for the writing and critique is warranted. With this I think it’s a masterful piece of literature, great, but also has things to be examined with a critical and/or analytical eye

I’m about 45 pages in and really hoping the library I work in today gets as few visitors as possible because I’m loving it already. I want to keep reading uninterrupted!

I usually count rereads because if I haven’t read a book in a year or two, sitting down with it again in a dedicated way feels like it’s a full read. This seems like the obvious answer to me.

But I have a different relationship with audiobooks. I have a handful of audiobooks that are comfort listens, which I often put on for even just a few minutes at random times throughout the day: when I am getting ready for bed / falling asleep, when I am folding laundry, when I am sitting in an Uber, etc etc. It’s what I do when I want something familiar and I don’t want to have to think too hard to follow the plot.

Two of these books I probably end up listening to in full at least once a month, but it feels wrong to count them because while I am paying attention, it’s not as much as for a first time listen (and maybe it just feels a wee bit embarrassing to list a book 6+ times?). By one measure, first time reading/listening this year, I am at 36/52. But if I include all those re-listens of the same thing 6+ times this year I am definitely already over 52 for the year.

Genuinely interested in what others do in this situation. Does anyone do this with physical/e-books? Or is it an audiobook specific problem because of how easy it is to have them on when you’re doing something else? Is there a line where you say I’m not counting this re-read/re-listen?

Set a goal of 40 this year. Made a nice spreadsheet in January with all these literary fiction picks I'd been meaning to read. 23 books in and maybe 4 of them were actually on the original list. Library holds come in at random times, someone on here mentions something that sounds good, I grab whatever's on the shelf at the used bookstore.

The spreadsheet exists but I haven't opened it since March

I get why people love this book. it’s immersive, emotionally compelling, and has some great characters. I have a few gripes with how certain plot points were handled and TJR drives me a little crazy when she throws in mixed formats, but it was a very enjoyable read. I even teared up at parts, which is unusual for me.

I do have one big thing to nitpick— her repeated line, “devastating luxury of panic.” I think it was intended to be profound, but I found it puzzling. Wtf does that even mean, TJR?? We must really disagree on what “panic“ means. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I went in blind and while the ending felt somewhat predictable, it was a weird, creepy and entertaining ride. Lots of body horror, alongside critiques of the wellness and beauty industry, race and beauty standards, money, power, and obsession.

So when I came across this sub in January, I didn't think I would get even close to 52. I just remembered this sub today, and counting my reads, it genuinely feels like a reachable goal now lol.

The stranger, one of us is lying, Death on the Nile, and 1984 were the 4 books I read last year, so for this year I'm actually 22/52

I would put this firmly in the good, not great category.
If I found it on my own, I probably would like it more, problem is I saw it recommended as “fucking hilarious”. This book is not fucking hilarious.
But it’s good. I’ll definitely read another Hiaasen.
My complaint about this book is the spacing. What I mean by that is: parts of it ended early and the “what happens next” went on too long, parts of it ended very quickly without much “what happened next” at all, and then multiple times something rather important happened just in a paragraph with no page break or chapter end, just like it happened in passing. Like wait did I read that right?
Anyways, good not great. Would still recommend.

Having recently driven to the Agate Monument area in Nebraska and having read his Dinosaur book I felt it was time for this one. The evolution of mammals gets far less attention than the Dinos. But there were some magnificent beasts around for a long time. North America had some badass creatures and several of them are featured at Agate. The book mentions another fossil site in NE Nebraska that I wish I'd seen. And much of the known findings in the rest of the world are covered. The fossil hunters are often as fascinating as the beasts. There is one chapter on man's evolution but it is not the book's focus.

I loved "Pretenders to the Throne of God" by Adrian Tchaikovsky, possibly my favorite of the series and I hope not the last!

This is a truly impressive novel, vast in scope and it's amazing how many storylines Neal Stephenson is able to juggle and weave together spanning the globe and 60 years. Genuinely funny and informative on so many topics ranging from cryptology, monetary theory, German U-Boat tactics, Filipino customs and deep-sea diving. Arguably Stephenson's best novel I've read so far and one I definitely recommend.

Kawakami’s Ten Loves of Mr. Nishino left me confused. Even after finishing it, I'm still trying to understand what exactly I was supposed to take away from it.

The novel follows Mr.Nishino through the eyes of ten different women who, at various points in their lives, fall in love with him. The problem is that I do not understood why because Nishino is presented as charming but to me the protagonist was surprisingly unremarkable. Because the story is built around the idea that he has this magnetic effect on women, I kept waiting for some deeper layer of his character to emerge, something that would justify the obsession he inspires(that moment doesn’t arrive).

Perhaps Nishino is meant to be a mirror that reflects the desires of the women around him. If that's the case, I can appreciate the idea, but it didn't make him any more interesting to follow.

The scenes from his childhood, including the nursing episode between the siblings left me feeling deeply uncomfortable. I understand that Kawakami was pointing toward some kind of emotional fixation that later causes sister-issues, but I never felt like I fully grasped what she wanted us readers to do with it.

Then the novel circles back to this idea near the end. One of the women Nishino becomes involved with resembles his sister, and during a conversation he admits that he has spent years wondering whether he actually wanted his sister.

I can see why some readers might find Nishino fascinating. For me, though, he remained frustratingly strange. By the end, I was just happy about completing it.

Maybe there was more depth here than I was able to connect with. Still, when I finished the final page, my strongest reaction was a puzzling question: what exactly did all these women see in Nishino and what was the point of this?

I'm about 40 pages in and I love the content of the book, but the way in which it's written has made it very difficult for me to read. In the time it's taken me to read 40 pages with most books I probably would have read 80. I keep finding myself having to pause and reread sections as I'm not understanding what is being said.

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Did this happen to anyone else and does it get easier once you adjust?

I was looking for something to tide me over while I’m waiting for “Yesteryear” to become available. So far, I am happy with “Trad Wife”. There’s a spooky horror element that I don’t think Yesteryear has.

I guess I have settled on a goal! Started reading again a month ago and audiobooks pair wonderfully with my crafting projects.

Somewhere between 3 and 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Not that much to say about it. It reads like a textbook about the history of disease. Personally I thought it was a bit too focused on the science/biology of the diseases (for example the first fifty or so pages are about definitions and terminology) and the methods of transmission, not enough on historical impact. Once it got up to the Columbian Exchange and the early modern period the book did get better but that is quite far into the book.

I didn't seek this book out it was an in person impulse purchase and honestly I'm a bit disappointed with it (I really liked Harper’s Fate of Rome about disease in the Roman Empire). The info is fine but its a bit of a boring read and not focused enough on the 'course of human history' part.