Monday, September 14, 2020

Quick Lit - September

Happy Quick Lit!  Life happened and this got up later than I would have liked, probably was reading something below when I "should" have been working on this post.  Oops.  I prioritize my reading over a great many things.  I'm linking up with Modern Mrs. Darcy, on Instagram here (where I sometimes post about books), and Goodreads here (which I check too many times a day).  I read a lot-ish and even blogged about two of them on their own because I liked them so much!:

Book Love: The Lazy Genius Way by Kendra Adachi

 

Book Love: The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel

 Now everything else!

 


How to Save a Life by Liz Fenton and Lisa Steinke

This book was very forgettable, as in, I barely could tell you that I read it.  Groundhog Day ish setting where a man relives the same day, over and over again, each time watching his newly reconnected former fiance die in pretty horrific ways.  And each time trying to change the circumstances so she wouldn't die.  But I couldn't get invested in their romance and I got a little tired of reading death scene after death scene.  2 Stars

Musical Chairs by Amy Poeppel

I enjoyed this book about a musician trio where two members are constant the third has changed a few times in their 20 (??) year history.  The story is told from the points of view of the two constant members as well as various connected family and friends.  It wasn't literary but more literary than much of what I read, really the perfect amount of serious mixed in with some fun.  It made me appreciate the long relationships (with friends, family, etc.) I've had and also appreciate some that aren't as long but are for the perfect season. 3.75 Stars

Get Out of Your Head: Stopping the Spiral of Toxic Thoughts by Jennie Allen

I spend too much time inside my own head, I've known that for years.  This book offers a lot of ways to get around that which could be very helpful to me.  However, I don't remember what a single one of them are right now.  So.  I think I read it too fast.  However, I know I found it helpful when I was reading it!  3.5 Stars

The Family Way, Through the Window, City of Darkness and Light by Rhys Bowen

I really knocked through some Molly Murphy books in the past 30 days!  They are perfect to mix in between some more contemporary books since they take place in the early 1900s and to show a very different side to NYC.  The Family Way goes inside a convent and touches on Catholicism which I appreciate, even though it wasn't always in the best light here.  Through the Window was a short story that moved the plot along and was a tightly packed and solved mystery.  City of Darkness and Light mostly takes place in Paris which was so fun to read about.  Very close to the time period of the Moulin Rouge movie that I just started rewatching (while I work from home during Sam's nap) and that was fun for a little overlap.  I am nearing the end of my journey with Molly and I've certainly enjoyed following along with her escapades through parts of the world I like and in a time frame I'm glad I don't live in. 3.5 Stars

And They Called It Camelot: A Novel of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis by Stephanie Marie Thornton

You can see from the title what the book is about.  It was LONG but very heavily researched.  Obviously, nobody can ever know exactly what happens in a marriage but this seems to have made a lot of educated guesses and feel like they very well could be right.  It starts about when Jackie was meeting JFK, through their wedding and early marriage.  How Jackie handled his rising political star, his family, and their kids.  Obviously Dallas and his assassination plays a big role but the story keeps going through her second marriage, relationship to Bobby Kennedy, and her late in life career as an editor.  I had a lot of empathy for Jackie while and after reading this.  It seems she went through A LOT.  Some of her own making, some not.  It doesn't seem like it was an easy life, even if it was briefly Camelot.  3.25 Stars

Finding Freedom: Harry and Meghan and the Making of a Modern Royal Family by Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand

Oh....I have thoughts on this one.  I do follow the British Royals and I found Harry & Meghan's exit earlier this year to be fascinating, exciting, and sad.  A whole lot of things.  This is from two journalists who I firmly believe got a lot of info directly from Harry and/or Meghan to tell "their" side of the story.  There just doesn't seem to be anyway the authors would have had all the info they had otherwise.  It was about 90% pro-Harry/Meghan and constantly reiterated how beautiful and seemingly perfect Meghan was, that got a little repetitive.  It was so interested to read about how super rich people date and get some new information behind of the scenes of their first few years together.  The book really seemed to falter in the last ~25% where it talked about the big split and attempted to show some of the side of the Royals (The Queen, Prince Charles, the Cambridges), it felt rushed and still pretty one sided.  The book mentioned how Charles got the corona virius which happen in March of this year...5 months before the book came out.  And the split only happened 7 months before the book.  There just didn't seem to be enough space from those events to really talk about what happened.  And also very little from 2020 that I hadn't already read somewhere else.  Still, I'm glad I read it but it could have been better with some more time. 3.5 Stars

The Switch by Beth O'Leary

This was a fun book that felt different from her The Flatshare of last year.  In this a granddaughter and grandmother switch places for two months - the granddaughter has been placed on work sabbatical in London and needs a break.  The grandmother is widowed (years ago) and doesn't like her romantic options in her small English town.  So they switch.  This opens up both their lives quite a bit to new adventures - mostly non-romantic but some of those too (it is a pretty chaste book too, although there is some language).  I miss my Grandparents and so appreciated reading about a young woman who has a lovely relationship with her grandmother. 3.5 Stars

The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11 by Garrett M. Graff

This was FANTASTIC and I think I'm going to do a deeper post on it, although maybe not posting until next fall.  Or maybe sooner.  I just wanted to note it in case I don't post anything about it for another year.   It was tragic and heartbreaking and sad but so well done and really made me understand that day even better.  As I said in a text to my family, I can't say I loved it but I really appreciated it.  5 Stars

The Relentless Moon by Mary Robinette Kowal

This is the third in a series about what could have happened if in the early 1950s, a meteor crashed near Washington DC and caused A LOT of death and destruction and made it so the Earth would, in the near future, be uninhabitable.  This speeds up the space program and by 1963, when this largely takes place, there is a colony on the Moon and a spaceship with humans headed to Mars.  The first in this series remains my favorite, 3 books in, and this was LONG. 538 pages, I believe, and A LOT of science talk.  I read reading this before bed while reading about 9/11 during the day and both were long books that took me almost a week to get through.  This one even went to the lake TWICE since I started it on one trip and hadn't yet finished it (and didn't until we were back home) by the time we went back.  It could have used some editing, maybe cut 100 pages, and I really got to the point where I wanted it done but I still added the 4th in the series to my TBR, even though it doesn't come out until 2022. 3 Stars

That is what I've been reading lately.  How about you?  I would ask this to every person I come across if it wasn't so presumptuous that they are reading books. 

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