I have a love/hate with A House for Happy Mothers — I didn’t like most of the characters, which made it hard to enjoy the book. I liked the subject (outsourcing surrogacy to India) and thought the story covered a lot of ground rather than just skimming over the top of sensitive and difficult topics. And, you’ll never believe it, I liked the ending.
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I picked up Hotel Ruby when we wandered around the YA section of the library last month. The title and description sounded appealing — and I like horror but haven’t read a lot of it lately.
This wasn’t great, but it wasn’t horrible, either. I can’t decided if I liked the ending or not, at least it wasn’t an altogether happy ending. Heck, I’m not sure I liked the premise or not.
And, interestingly — it looks like this book got a new name in the paperback version, it’s Hotel for the Lost? (or maybe it’s a US vs Canadian version thing? I’m not sure but it’s interesting… the new name is possibly a better name for the book. I just hope people who read one version don’t buy the other version thinking it’s a sequel or a different book. I assumed it was a sequel at first.)
Woot! A Cybil I loved, loved, LOVED. Run was excellent. Both Agnes and Bo felt like real people. I especially liked the ending — Agnes’s parents behaved true to character rather than tying things up in the perfect happily ever after. (And, I admit I might have shed a tear or two there towards the end.)
PS. Four books in the first four days of the month. How long has it been since I could say that?
Considering I read a whopping five books total in August, September is off to an amazing start! Three books down (all YA) and it’s 8amish on 9/4! How awesome is that? (And, today’s a holiday so I should be able to get some more reading in — even though we need to run into a city of some sort where there is a Lowes… anyway, back to the books…)
I read the next two books in the Stranje House series. (Refuge for Masterminds and Exile for Dreamers.) Both were just as good as the first one. Now, how long will it be before we get the next two books in the series?
After that, I read The One Memory of Flora Banks was difficult. I think it’s the mom part of me that read this and just shuddered all the way through it. I kept trying to figure out how I would parent a child who had no short-term memory. (I also wonder how kids feel about this story. I might have to go track down some kid reviews to find out.)
Three YA! Yes, THREE! Read More »
LOL Five. Five books. Total. Hahahahaha, sob.
1 Cybil! (Both the high point and low point in my month of reading.)
1 Audibook
1 YA
1 non-fiction
Five. Good grief. This is ridiculous.
I finally read a book from the Cybils shortlist! Can you believe it? We’re almost nine months into 2017 and I think it’s my first. Ugh. Oy. I miss YA, middle grade, and children’s fiction. Sigh.
Worse yet, I did not love The Goblin’s Puzzle: Being the Adventures of a Boy with No Name and Two Girls Called Alice. In fact, I came close to saying I hated it. TW read it first and when I asked her how it was, she said it was “OK” but she made that face that means she didn’t/doesn’t like something. I see now why she felt that way.
I wanted to love it. It’s a CYBIL for goodness sake. I liked the kids, I liked the dragon and the goblin and even the ogre. The bad guys were well-written bad guys. But… the slavery storyline.
I understand why the author decided to write this (sort of) but I just kept picturing some middle school or late elementary school kid reading this and I do not think it was the right story. It certainly wasn’t the right ending. I mean do we really want to teach kids that the white powerful man only abolishes slavery because it won’t have any negative effect on his wallet or his kingdom because his kingdom doesn’t really have slaves anyway? (Yes, I know this is actually fairly true but the way it was told in the story actually celebrated the King’s decision without pointing out the problems with his decision. It’s a very shallow dive into this very complex issue.)
Also, the whole part of the story where the progressive white girl and the goblin (ugh) had to explain to the slave boy why slavery was bad and convince him (trick him?) into believing he shouldn’t be a slave boy. Really? We really need to perpetuate the idea that slaves liked being slaves and without the benevolent white folks dragging them out of slavery they’d still be there?
OK I didn’t mean to write all of this… clearly, since it’s a jumble. I could write more but I won’t because … whatever.
The adventure was fun. The kids, the dragon, the goblin, (and even the ogre) were fun. If you could strip out the underlying badly told aspects about slavery it would be a terrific book.
The Goblin’s Puzzle: Being the Adventures of …etc. Read More »
We needed an audiobook so I grabbed Beach House for Rent because we always enjoy a book about a Charleston beach… this one was not our favorite. (But at least there weren’t a bunch of glaring inaccuracies about Sullivan’s Island/Isle of Palms, which happens quite a lot in books about my hometown.)
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TW said I should read A School for Unusual Girls because it was like a YA Pink Carnation book. She’s right, it is like that. It’s also like a non-steampunk Gail Carriger Finishing School book.
Obviously I enjoyed it.
Totally fun and the next book in the series is waiting for us at the library.
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The title caught my eye and while I didn’t hate My (not so) Storybook Life, I didn’t love it either. TW quit the book before she’d made it through four chapters. I thought about quitting it but stuck with it and enjoyed it more towards the ends.
The “Friendship and Faith” part of the title escaped me, so I struggled with that aspect of the book. I’m not opposed to memoirs that explore the author’s relationship with religion or God, but this one just wasn’t interesting to me.
I did find the re-written literature sections at the beginning of each chapter to be fun (TW did not like them one bit.)
My (not so) Storybook Life Read More »
I’ve read a lot of Dorothea Benton Frank’s books because duh, Charleston beaches. All Summer Long was my least favorite. If I had been able to find another light and easy read on my library cart, I’d have probably quit it about 75 pages in. I just did not like the characters and there wasn’t enough “Charleston” for me.
I ended up liking it slightly better towards the ends but not so much. (My favorite characters were NOT the main characters who moved to Sullivan’s Island. I pretty much hated them both.)