Fiction

The View from Mount Joy

2016, Audiobooks, Books in Bed, Fiction /

We were in need of an audiobook and we’d either read everything that caught my eye or we would probably never want to read things that caught my eye. The View from Mount Joy looked like something we might have read and it looked like something we probably wouldn’t hate, so I grabbed it.

I mostly liked it. TW hated the main character but I thought he was OK. He was flawed and douchey but that’s how teen boys and men can be. It’s part of their societal makeup but he mostly overcame all of that. Mostly.

All in all, a perfectly fine audiobook while we waited for Maisie Dobbs to arrive.

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The Walls Around Us

2016, Books in Bed, Cybil Challenge, Fiction, Young Adult /

Here’s a Cybils shortlister that I didn’t love. I didn’t hate it, but it just didn’t grab me the way I had hoped. From the reviews of The Walls Around Us, I might be the only person who didn’t just absolutely love it.

It’s dark, it’s ghost story-like, it’s beautifully written — it just didn’t work for me. It might, however, work for you. Try it and let me know.

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The Forgotten Room

2016, Books in Bed, Chick Lit, Favorites, Fiction, Women /

Having read everything Willig has written and most of what White has written (though only a little of what Williams has written) it’s hard for me to believe that I did not know The Forgotten Room existed until I stumbled across it on the “new arrivals” shelf. WTF?

I was a little worried about it — would it be really obvious as to which author wrote each section, particularly once I realized there were three women across three time period? (It wasn’t.) Would it be jarring to move from White to Williams to Willig? (It wasn’t.)

I really enjoyed the story but admit to spending an inordinate amount of time tracking the lineage and saying, that can’t be right because INCEST and stuff like that. lol

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Four Graphic Novels

2016, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Comics & Graphic Novels, Cybil Challenge, Favorites, Fiction, Non-Fiction, Queer, Young Adult /

Readathons, even #fakereadathons, mean I get to spend some time catching up on graphic novels and these four were excellent. All four of them.

Roller Girl was awesome. I loved everything about it. I hope there are more Roller Girl books.

Next, I read March Book 2 and it was good, obviously, because John Lewis, y’all.

After that, Sunny Side Up. Poor kid. This was well written and well drawn. I didn’t expect much from it and was very pleasantly surprised.

Last, but not least, Honor Girl. Loved it. And, shockingly, I loved the ending. Some people probably didn’t – those “I want a happy endinggggg.” kinds of people. Nope. It ended exactly as it should have.

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The Last Bookaneer

2016, Books in Bed, Fiction /

It took me AGES to read this book, partly because of the RNC and the DNC but also because the damn thing was SLOW. The premise was good. The characters were interesting. But good lord, it could have been about 100 pages shorter and been a much better book. By the time I got to the end, I no longer cared about The Last Bookaneer or any damn bookaneer at all. I didn’t even care about Robert Louis Stevenson.

Darn it.

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The Gap of Time

2016, Books in Bed, Fiction, Queer /

Look at me finishing another book! I’m not sure it 100% counts though since I started reading The Gap of Time right before we leave Illinois. I only got about 50 pages into it because the beginning was slow and I hated all of the people and also because the last week before we moved was NUTS.

I like Winterson enough that I was willing to check it out from the library again and keep going. I’m glad I did. It will never be my favorite Winterson novel and I’m not really a fan of ‘The Winters Tale’ but I did end up enjoying the book and it really was the first 50 pages that were rough.

(I also like the video game idea… that’s pretty interesting. Someone should build that game.)

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