May! What are you reading?

[Rowan]

I have Hausfrau in my bag.

I read The Selection yesterday at LAX practice. I liked it enough to get the next in series.

[Rowan]

I finished Hausfrau and liked it. What is it about the recent thing of writing about characters you hate? Not even love to hate but just hate.

I'm on the 3rd book of the Selection series. Total fluff but I'm liking it. I've read The Selection, The Elite and now The One. I'm considering this research as I'd love to write a YA series.

[mellenhead]

I have been in a major reading rut. Tried to start a couple different books and just couldn't get into anything.

I did finish up the audiobook of The True Meaning of Smekday. So so good. The narrator was fantastic. Not sure I would have enjoyed the print version as much.

[Sílvia]

Mellen, so have I. Maybe we should tell each other what we're not liking amd make each other happy

Still slogging through The Distant Hours by Kate Morton. I'm 52% in after ONE week, and now things finally seem to be picking up. I only persisted with this because I loved her 3 other novels and I do love her writing, even if the plot didn't seem to be going anywhere. But geez. Don't publishers use editors these days? And if so, what do they do all day? I'm becoming veerrry suspicious of books that are longer than 300-350 pages, as I feel most stories can be told in that many pages. Unless it's a family saga spanning generations.

[Rowan]

mellen, read Small Mercies by Eddie Joyce.

[Rowan]

Finished The One. The next in the series just came out and I'll get it when it is ready.

I read No Regrets from Jen Lancaster on the train yesterday. I still think she's funny but I just don't think she has the content for memoirs anymore.

I have a YA novel The Raft in my bag today.

[Sílvia]

Finally finished The Distant Hours. I loved the first 100 and the last 100 pages, but the middle 360 dragged and dragged. It had all the perfect ingredients for me: English setting, a crumbling castle, WW2, dual timeline, madness, several mysteries... it's a shame the middle was so slow. 3 stars.

Then I read the sample of Bird Box (post-apocalyptic horror story?). Everyone on every site was saying they couldn't put it down, but up to the point I read I was unimpressed. Haven't I read or watched something similar several times before? More and more I get the impression that most people who post their opinions online are a good 15-20 years younger than me. Sigh.

Then I started a sample of a Brazilian that hasn't been translated into English, so no point in commenting.

ETA: decided to finish Bird Box after all. Funnily enough, the sample in Portuguese was a lot longer than the one in English. I downloaded it after finishing the English sample and did get hooked after a while.

[Bugsy]

I finished "Bad Feminist" by Roxane Gay on the ride home this afternoon. I'd gotten partway through it a few months ago but didn't finish before it was due back. This was the first "feminist" writing I'd ever really read, and it was really great. I'll likely seek out more from her and/or others from this genre.

Then I am going to resume "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion," by Jonathan Haidt. I'm roughly 2/3 through it but had to put it down to finish Bad Feminist when it came in off my hold list.

[Spudd]

I read a ton of books on vacation.

My faves were:
The Mill River Recluse by Darcie Chan - total beach fluff book, but I liked it, and I didn't foresee everything that happened
Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell - LOVED it
The Circle by Dave Eggers - I really liked this one too. I think it's a semi-accurate portrayal of the future and kinda scary.

Now I'm reading The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls. It's a memoir. I'm enjoying it so far, but I'm not super far into it yet.

[Rowan]

Spudd, I loved Beat the Reaper too. There's supposed to be a movie. There is also a 2nd book which I was so excited about but thought was just meh. YMMV though.

I read The Perfect Score project this weekend about a mom who wanted to help her son score well on SAT and she ended up taking the SAT 7 times in a year. It was interesting. Bottom line was that if you don't have a good foundation (for her it was math) then it is really hard to up your score no matter what you do however if you have a good foundation (for her verbal) there is the possibility to raise it a few hundred points. I should read it again in 6 years.

I'm reading The Children's Crusade by Ann Packer which is ok. It's interesting enough to continue but I don't love any one character which makes it a bit of a slog.

[Bugsy]

This morning I finished "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion," by Jonathan Haidt. This was a really well-written book. Although it's a heavier subject matter and had some moments of dragging, it was one of the most "approachable" NF books I've read. And it absolutely has already made a difference in how I "see" the morality of "the other side." Interesting stuff.

Nothing new planned just yet, but that won't take long to change.

[Bugsy]

Started "The Rosie Project" by Graeme C. Simsion this morning. It's...odd...so far. Fine, but odd.

[Rowan]

I'm still reading The Children's Crusade. It's going so slow. Its fine but not gripping.

I have a nice stack for the weekend. Yum yum yum.

[Sílvia]

Finished Bird Box. It was ok. Gripping enough that I wanted to know how it would end, and an easy read, but nothing special.

Then I read The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah. Overall I loved it, but it wasn't perfect. It's about Nazi occupied France during WW2, 2 sisters, one trying to survive and protect her family, the other joining the resistance. I'm not crazy about her writing, and there was a love story that left me cold, but in general it was a very good story. Never a dull moment for me.

Not sure what's next. I have samples of The Road, Middlesex, and something by Connie Willis, plus The Handmaid's Tale (thanks, Spudd), but right now my heart's still in Europe in 1945. I might read something else about WW2.

[Spudd]

Silvia, have you read the Ken Follett book set in the war? Fall of Giants is WW1 and Winter of the World is WW2. I only read Fall of Giants but it was pretty decent. I was kinda disappointed it wasn't as good as that cathedral book by him... um... Pillars of the Earth.

[Sílvia]

I've read them both, but I didn't like them as much as Pillars of the Earth. I wanted a liiittle more fiction, a little less fact and was slightly bored by the history overload, to be honest. My mom has read all 3 (the third one's about the Cold War) and loved them all. I think I'm gonna read Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay. Then there's a bunch more that look interesting, if I'm not done with WW2 by then. Apparently WW2 is practically a genre these days!

[Sílvia]

Finished Sarah's Key. I liked it. Didn't love it.

Then I started Three Wishes by Liane Moriarty. I'm shocked to say I don't like it. That's a first with Ms. Moriarty. And this is my last of her novels The good news is it's HER first novel, so she got much better with time. This one's too chick-lit-y. You know the kind, trying too hard to be funny/cute/hip.

[Bugsy]

I finished "The Rosie Project" over the weekend. Meh...it got a bit better as it progressed, but this didn't really do it for me.

Then I've just started "Euphoria" by Lily King for book club. I'm only a few pages in so far.