June! What are you reading?

[Rowan]

Finished Remember Me Like This. I liked the beginning 100 pages of this and then it just fell off for me. Bummer.

I shipped all my library books back. I think I'm going to work on the book fair paperbacks that I buy for travel so that I don't have to move so much. I'm not traveling as much or as far anymore so I don't need such a stash. Not sure what's next...

[mellenhead]

I finished Astonish Me by Maggie Shipstead. I wanted to like it more than I did. I did like it, I just found the latter half of the book somewhat unsatisfying.

I have Summer House with Swimming Pool by Herman Koch (loved his book The Dinner) waiting for me at the library so I'll probably start that next.

[Bugsy]

On my ride in this morning I finished "Insurgent." This series really isn't doing much for me, but I've reserved "Allegiant." I've read the first two, so might as well finish it up, right?

[Spudd]

I finally finished The Lonely Polygamist. Audiobooks take me a while to read because I only get to listen to them when I'm going for walks by myself, which is rare. Anyway, I enjoyed it well enough. It had some pretty funny parts.

I started "My Name is Mary Sutter" also on audiobook. So far I'm enjoying it, but I'm only like 40 minutes into it.

Paper book wise, I finished "The King's Last Song", and started "The Rice Mother" in my Asian themed reading. The King's Last Song was okay, but I wouldn't really recommend it. It was a little dull.

[Bugsy]

Spudd, I didn't know (or forgot) that you were listening to The Lonely Polygamist too. I'm just over halfway through it now. It took quite a while for it to grow on me, but I'm enjoying it now. It definitely has funny parts but also some really super sad parts. I hope I'll be able to renew it again at the end of next week, because I definitely won't be finished with it by then.

[Blush]

I finished David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell. It was typical MG; some good talking points.

Now I have "The Girl Who Was Saturday Night" by Heather O'Neill (author of Lullabies for Little Criminals).

Nineteen years old, free of prospects, and inescapably famous, the twins Nicholas and Nouschka Tremblay are trying to outrun the notoriety of their father, a French-Canadian Serge Gainsbourg with a genius for the absurd and for winding up in prison. “Back in the day, he could come home from a show with a paper bag filled with women’s underwear. Outside of Québec nobody had even heard of him, naturally. Québec needed stars badly.”
Since the twins were little, Étienne has made them part of his unashamed seduction of the province, parading them on talk shows and then dumping them with their decrepit grandfather while he disappeared into some festive squalor. Now Étienne is washed up and the twins are making their own almost-grown-up messes, with every misstep landing on the front pages of the tabloid Allo Police. Nouschka not only needs to leave her childhood behind; she also has to leave her brother, whose increasingly erratic decisions might take her down with him.

[mellenhead]

I'm about 3/4 of the way down with Summer House with a Swimming Pool. It's good but not quite a gripping as The Dinner. Hopefully the ending doesn't disappoint.

After that I have Hard Choices by Hillary Clinton and The Book of Unknown Americans by Cristina Henriquez waiting at the library.

[Bugsy]

"The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work" by John Gottman just came in as an e-book for me. I've been waiting a long time for this one! I'll probably start it on the bus ride home.

[mellenhead]

I finished Summer House with Swimming Pool by Herman Koch. Eh. The ending didn't do much for me.

Not sure what I'm going to read next. I should read Hard Choices by Hilary Clinton since I have it out and there are a ton of holds on it but I'm not sure I'm in the mood.

[Blush]

I finished "The Girl Who was Saturday Night". In typical Canadian fashion it was a bit weird, but it was good. It was set in Montreal during the last (hopefully last ever?) referendum when Quebec was voting whether or not to separate. I remember that time well and the night of the referendum (October of 95) my whole family was watching to see if it would be Oui ou Non. Anyway, that wasn't the focus of the novel, just the setting, but it provided a tense backdrop.

Now I have "The Burning Air" by Erin Kelly.

From Good Reads:

The MacBrides have always gone to Far Barn in Devon for Bonfire Night, but this year everything is different. Lydia, the matriarch, is dead; Sophie, the eldest daughter, is desperately trying to repair a crumbling marriage; and Felix, the youngest of the family, has brought a girlfriend with him for the first time.

The girl, Kerry, seems odd in a way nobody can quite put their finger on - but when they leave her looking after Sophie's baby daughter, and return to find both Kerry and the baby gone, they are forced to ask themselves if they have allowed a cuckoo into their nest...

Gripping and chilling, with a killer twist, The Burning Air reaffirms Erin Kelly as one of Britain's foremost psychological thriller writers.

[Rowan]

Finally finished Miracle Cure by Harlan Coben. I typically love his stand alone novels but this was awful awful awful. I think it was something he wrote early in his career.

I started Intent to Kill by James Grippando and it's already so much better.

[Bugsy]

I got through about 1.5 discs of The Lonely Polygamist on our drive up on Saturday, and then the sound quality got awful...skipping, garbly, etc. I cleaned the disc at home last night, but it was the same this morning. So I get halfway through disc #14 (of 20), and now I can't continue. I just reserved the paperback copy at the library and should be able to pick that up later this week to finish the book.

"The Goldfinch" by Donna Tartt came in on digital audiobook, so I will probably start that later this week as well.

And I'm roughly halfway through "The 7 Principles for Making Marriage Work."

[Blush]

I finished The Burning Air. It was really good. It would make a good movie.

Now I have The Rosie Project. Looking forward to it.