What I've Been Reading...

We've got some rapid fire book reviews on this Monday which doubles as my husbands birthday! Woohoo Dairy Queen ice cream cake!

"Long Walk to Valhalla" by Adam Smith - Picked this short graphic novel off a library display as I was frantically grabbing for things to read in anticipation of a library shut down due to COVID19. A quick read about the bond between brothers in a wretched family situation and a mysterious girl who shows up one day. Odin meets The South.

Doctor Sleep by Stephen King - I very much like The Shining, the book and the movie, so I was intrigued by the sequel. I saw the movie first and I thought "this was a decent movie but I bet it's one of those movies that they had to cut out a bunch of things to make it a reasonable length of time". So I read the book. I liked it! It was a completely serviceable sequel to a wildly popular work. I liked grown up Danny, but I love a good redemption story.

"Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London" by Lauren Elkin. I did not like this book like, at all. It was a struggle. I thought it was going to be like "this lady walks around all of these cities and these are her observances about what makes these cities great" and it was not like that at all. It was a lot of whining and long rambles about movie plots that were barely connected and ugh. No.

You're A Miracle (and a Pain in the Ass): Embracing the Emotions, Habits and Mystery that Makes You You by Mike McHargue. I didn't know this author, but an author that I liked had mentioned this book coming out in her newsletter and it sounded intriguing so I checked it out. It didn't quite hit for me and I'm not really sure why. It was a very honest memoir in part (and I don't really do memoirs so maybe that is part of it) and then got very sciencey in others. I felt like it just didn't quite know what it was and struggled to find a cohesive path.

The Water Cure by Sophie Mackintosh. This book is about 4 sisters who are cloistered on an island with her paranoid parents to keep them from men that are physically toxic to women. Or are they just lying? Meh, this book was fine.

The Last by Hanna Jameson : My first read of the Adult Summer Reading program from my library! A story about a group of travelers stranded in a Swiss hotel during a nuclear war. I liked that it felt like was pretty realistic about how people would behave if you didn't die immediately in a nuclear war. Lots of characters but not too hard to keep straight- there was one storyline that was wrapped up poorly I thought but was otherwise a really satisfying, entertaining book.