Submitted by Jeff Fisher
Blog Reads Book Club is returning for its second installment. Have you read or listened to a great book lately? Are you eager to share the book with others? Please use the comments section to this blog post to share the author and title of the book, as well as what you enjoyed about it.
Just a reminder that the next installment of Whatcha Reading is May 25 at 1pm. The theme is Historical Fiction. Meeting details are below.
Google Meet details for the May 25 Whatcha Reading:
Dial-in: (US) +1 252-427-2099
PIN: 990 996 491#
I love a good informational read! I picked up Engineering in Plain Sight by Grady Hillhouse off the new nonfiction shelf and it's really cool! It's an explanation in layman's terms of all the infrastructure that keeps our world running (roads, electricity and phone lines, water management, etc.) with lots of illustrations. And, if you are interested in the topics but don't have time for the whole book, I accidentally discovered that the writer has a YouTube channel where he covers the topics in the book. After I had checked out the book, a video on traffic control systems popped up on my YouTube feed and I watched it... then got to the same chapter in the book and noticed the very similar script, and put the pieces together!
ReplyDeleteAnyways, it's pretty fascinating stuff to think about, the book points out how you can observe and understand these structures in the real world, and it's well written and approachable in how it presents the information.
I just finished listening to the fourth book in the Red Rising series, Iron Gold by Pierce Brown. As always, Brown had me on the edge of my seat for the entire duration of this installation - so much so that I jumped right into Dark Age, the fifth book.
ReplyDeleteIn a universe in which the reds and other lesser colors (pinks, grays, etc.) are on the bottom and the ruthless golds are on top, there are bound to be a few who want to destroy the hierarchy. Darrow of Lykos, a red from Mars, is thrust into the middle of the war. I cannot say much about this book without spoiling the others, so I will just say this: if you are into science fiction but enjoy a few YA tropes in an adult book - and if you want to scream in your car about the plot twists on your way to work - then this series is for you!
I'm almost done listening to the memoir I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy on Libby. The subject material is heavy (dealing with an abusive parent while coping with child stardom). My husband listened to about an hour of it when I had it playing, and he thought it was fiction "because it seemed too well-written and interesting to be a memoir."
ReplyDeleteI listened to this a few months ago and after finishing it, all I want to do is give Jennette a hug. I can never watch iCarly the same again knowing everything she went through during the show's filming.
DeleteI love to listen to audiobooks read by the author because they tell it how they meant for it to be read. You can pick up on emotions in the author's voice as they read a certain section. In this book, toward the end, where she is describing when she realized it was abuse that her mother put her through, and in the audiobook, Jennette sounds like she's trying not to cry, I was the one crying. I am so glad she was, and still is, trying get through all of the abuse she endured.
After I finished it, I wish I had never read it because it's so tragic, yet I'm glad I did because it shows that we all have the strength to get better despite feeling we've hit rock bottom. Jennette has been through so much and I'm glad she was able to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
I also listened to I'm Glad My Mom Died recently for a book club. I had never heard of Jennette McCurdy prior to listening to the book, but I felt so sad for her as I listened to it. I was glad when she eventually realized that her mom abused her, as tough as it was for her to accept. It was a hard book to listen to, even without knowing who she was or the shows she talked about.
DeleteI finished reading, for the second time, The Last Thing He Told Me, by Laura Dave. This is the title that Book Sleuths will be discussing on May 23. This book has been so successful that it has been made into a miniseries, currently showing on Apple+ TV and it is also being made into a movie. The book is a mystery, but also is very much about family, sacrifice, loyalty, and love. The fact that it covers so many subjects has helped to make it such a popular title. And the story is unusual - quite different from anything I have read before. Hannah, a successful furniture maker, marries Owen and moves to California to begin a life with Owen and his teenage daughter, Bailey. When they have been married only a year, Owen vanishes, and leaves two cryptic messages, one for Hannah and one for Bailey. The CEO of the company Owen works for has just been arrested on fraud charges. Hannah and Bailey believe Owen is not involved in criminal activity at the company, so it has to be something else that would make him disappear. The book is about Hannah and Bailey trying to make sense of Owen vanishing and following Bailey’s memories of her life as a four-year-old to trace Owen’s earlier life. And of course, to complicate the story, law enforcement is looking for Owen to see what he knows about the company fraud, and Bailey has never accepted Hannah, so there is conflict between the two. You will continue to think about this story, especially the way it ends, for a very long time after you finish reading - there are so many paths that were not taken.
ReplyDeleteI just finished reading I'll Stop the World by Lauren Thoman. It's a fun mystery that involves time travel. Justin somehow time travels from 2023 to 1985 and meets Rose. She believes Justin that he is from the future and they decide to work together to solve the mystery of who burned down a garage in their shared hometown several months earlier (in Rose's timeline), and try to prevent the death of Justin's grandparents in a week. Justin never met his grandparents because they died in a fire in 1985, leaving behind Justin's mom who was only a small child at the time. Their deaths caused ripple effects well into the future, and Justin and Rose race against time to solve the mystery and change the future.
ReplyDeleteThe setting in the 1985 was fun for me, as Justin got a lesson on life in the 1980s. I was reminded how different life is for my teens than it was for me in the (late) 1980s.
I'm almost finished with "Clytemnestra" by Costanza Casati. I've read a few Greek myth retellings and this is BY FAR my favorite one! All I knew about Clytemnestra before going in was that Agamemnon complained about her poisoning him in "The Odyssey." Casati really fleshes out the story and adds so much complexity to Clytemnestra.
ReplyDeleteCasati is an Ancient Greek scholar and that really shows in all her historical details. The writing is more like vignettes stitched together, but it still reads very richly and makes the pacing so quick. It's going to be a 5/5 for me for sure.