Stray City – Chelsey Johnson
Rating: 3 stars
Cliff Notes: It was fine.
Full Summary: I think I would have liked it better with more in depth POV chapters from various characters.
The River – Peter Heller
Rating; 3 stars
Cliff Notes: It was fine.
Full Summary: I think it would make a better movie, I hope they make it into one. I did not understand descriptions of fly fishing and hunting and survivalist stuff.
Wunderland – Jennifer Cody Epstein
Rating: 3 stars (would be 3 1/2 if Goodreads had partials)
Cliff Notes: I love all books about WW2 so I might be biased.
Full Summary: I have always had a fascination with books about World War 2 so when I saw this book‘s review in People Magazine I knew I wanted to read it. It did not disappoint. It was a a little different in that the 2 girls were teenagers during the Nazi-era vs most of the books I read where the characters are adults. Plus it went in reverse time through part of it and also had flash backs and flash forwards so that was interesting, but made it confusing at times.
I Miss You When I Blink – Mary Laura Philpott
Rating: 4 stars
Cliff Notes: I love this format – separate chapter essays of non-fiction. This is the first thing I have read by this author, and I really enjoyed it. I plan to put her other book, Penguins with People Problems, on my TBR as well.
“I feel like a human traffic jam.”
This is but one of the gems you will get in this book. I usually call this feeling Tuesday afternoon.
Full Summary: One of the best things I like in a book is chapter, passage, or page that can feel like a gut punch and make me laugh out loud at the same time. This book is that.
One of my favorite chapters is about friendships, how they change as adults, and how they can sometimes be mindnumbingly superficial. I get tired of talking about the weather, “Pleasant weather we’re having. Blessed be the fruit.” I get tired of talking about superficial stuff or bragging about how much we are failing as mothers, wives or women. The author describes a long, painful discuss about chicken salad.
I too am done discussing chicken salad. I want more from my relationships.
True Blue – David Baldacci
Rating: 3 stars
Cliff Notes: Quick Beach Week read
Full Summary: I liked the sisters and plan to go to Baldacci’s backlist to see if there is a book that covers Mace’s kidnapping, etc. I could have done without about 100 pages of Psycho, Tyler, Razor, etc. I don’t think it would have spoiled the plot at all.
The Girls in the Picture – Melanie Benjamin
Rating: 3 stars
Cliff Notes: It was fine. I got bogged down in name dropping and movie titles. I do want to look up the movie Fran did about women in WW1.
Full Summary: I liked the theme woven throughout this book – that women need to band together and support each other. I believe that a high tide raises all boats. But it also showed how hard we are on each other at times and how we let men waylay our goals, relationships with other women, and / or both.
The Fallen – David Baldacci
Rating: 3 stars
Cliff Notes: I really like the Amos Decker character, but I could have used this book to be shorter by about 75 pages and less of a skip off into the sunset.
Full Summary: Not much more to add to the review, really. I don’t need much personality woven into my Amos Decker stories. It was sweet how he connected with Zoe, but it did not change the rating for me. I will continue to read the Memory Man series!
Odd Apocalypse – Dean Koontz
Rating: 2 stars
Cliff Notes: Omg I should have quit this damn book. I threw this one when I finished it. I may never read another Odd Thomas.
Full Summary: It usually does take a bit to get into the action in an Odd Thomas book, but this was extraordinarily long. Then when the action hit, it was effing time travel!? No thank you. Don’t muck up my Beach Week reading with science fiction. Blergh. I spent 512 pages on this puppy so you better believe I threw it when I was done. I generally don’t believe in book abuse, but when I get tricked into not abandoning stuff like this – BYYYYYEEEE!!!
Lucky – Alice Sebold
Rating: 4 stars
Cliff Notes: I am not sure how I missed that this was a memoir of her rape as a Syracuse freshman. Perhaps not a great choice for a Beach Week read, but I am glad I did.
Full Summary: I am glad this was relatively short because I could not put it down, and it was intense. I picked it up because The Lovely Bones is a favorite of mine – a book I kept even after reading it. I kept waiting for the twist where the rapist would go free on a technicality and was so grateful how it all turned out.
Then I was confused when there were still about 50 pages of the book left but her trial was over. THEN OH MY GOSH. I do not pretend this is a spoiler-free blog, but on this one I am going to leave this as just an OH MY GOSH. I truly think that last part of the book is the lesson that we are supposed to learn from this memoir. How we all come to – and leave from – each situation differently.
After I finished reading this book, I also spent time thinking about Sebold’s current relationship with her mother. It is not a spoiler to say her mom was unhelpful almost to the point of harmful, then there was such a heartfelt message to her mother in the acknowledgments. Was there a reckoning that happened? What does her mom think about how she was portrayed in the book? I plan to do a deep dive on this the next time I cannot sleep in the middle of the night. I shall report back.
My Reading Life – Pat Conroy
Rating: 3 stars
Cliff Notes: There is no better place to read Pat Conroy than on the beach in South Carolina. This had to be a Beach Week read.
Full Summary: Although this is not the book I rated highest of those I read during Beach Week, it is my favorite from the week. I love Pat Conroy, and I love reading. So to read about Pat Conroy’s reading life on the beaches of South Carolina (where he was raised and where most of his books seem to be set), was just too good to pass up.
I did not love every book that Conroy wrote about (many I have not even read – I am not the Brainy Smurf I pretend to be), but it really gave insight into his writing style. For example, the chapter on Tom Wolfe was so revealing because Conroy talks about how he has modeled his super wordy style after his love of all of Wolfe’s writing. Of course he says it much more eloquently, verbosely and humorously. You kind of have to read it to get it. Sort of like hearing how he describes, Gone with the Wind:
To Southerners like my mother, Gone with the Wind was not just a book; it was an answer, a clenched first raise to the North, an anthem of defiance.