Books I Finished The Past 2 Weeks

September 16-29, 2018

*Click the book cover for links to full reviews.

Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire

This story was very strange, but it was so wonderfully written. It is eery, with this almost perfect balance between comical and serious, dark and light, fairy tale and thriller. I have already put the next two books in the series on hold at my library.

Synopsis: Children have always disappeared under the right conditions; slipping through the shadows under a bed or at the back of a wardrobe, tumbling down rabbit holes and into old wells, and emerging somewhere... else. But magical lands have little need for used-up miracle children. Nancy tumbled once, but now she’s back. The things she’s experienced... they change a person. The children under Miss West’s care understand all too well. And each of them is seeking a way back to their own fantasy world.

Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Seanan McGuire

This book is once again an eerie, dark fairy tale from McGuire that focuses on breaking down what it means to be a girl. It is also about choices. It’s a short, quick read with beautiful writing and made me even more determined to read the author’s next book.

Synopsis: Twin sisters Jack and Jill were seventeen when they went home and were packed off to Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children. This is the story of what happened first…

Jacqueline was her mother’s perfect daughter—polite and quiet, always dressed as a princess. If her mother was sometimes a little strict, it’s because crafting the perfect daughter takes discipline. Jillian was her father’s perfect daughter—adventurous, thrill-seeking, and a bit of a tom-boy. He really would have preferred a son, but you work with what you've got. They were five when they learned that grown-ups can’t be trusted.

The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton

Kate Morton has this great way of storytelling, especially since she focuses on using flashbacks in order to slowly give you the full picture. The shifting perspectives of various characters in The Secret Keeper (Laurel, her mother Dorothy or Dolly, Vivien and Jimmy) from 1941 to 1961 to 2011 allow for a wide view of the plot across the different decades in time that impact the story.

Synopsis: During a summer party at the family farm in the English countryside, sixteen-year-old Laurel Nicolson has escaped to her childhood tree house and is happily dreaming of the future. She spies a stranger coming up the long road to the farm and watches as her mother speaks to him. Before the afternoon is over, Laurel will witness a shocking crime.

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

Gail Honeyman wrote this novel with a perfect balance of sad and humorous scenes. She took a serious and difficult issue and somehow made it warm and funny, while still showing the severity and sadness of depression and loneliness. It was a book filled with emotion without making it overly-sentimental and made me laugh and cry with it’s perfect moments.

Synopsis: Eleanor Oliphant has learned how to survive - but not how to live. Eleanor Oliphant leads a simple life. She wears the same clothes to work every day, eats the same meal deal for lunch every day and buys the same two bottles of vodka to drink every weekend. Eleanor Oliphant is happy. Nothing is missing from her carefully timetabled life. Except, sometimes, everything. One simple act of kindness is about to shatter the walls Eleanor has built around herself. Now she must learn how to navigate the world that everyone else seems to take for granted - while searching for the courage to face the dark corners she's avoided all her life. Change can be good. Change can be bad. But surely any change is better than. . . fine?

Books I’m Currently Reading

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

Yep, still on here. I’m 70% done now - 10% up from the previous week, woot woot! Still a bit slow going I think because of the material but also because sometimes the language is superfluous and I get lost.

Synopsis: Humbert Humbert - scholar, aesthete and romantic - has fallen completely and utterly in love with Lolita Haze, his landlady's gum-snapping, silky skinned twelve-year-old daughter. 

Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts

This book is 936 pages, so it may take me a while. I’m currently on 65, so…..yea.

Synopsis: "It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured." So begins this epic, mesmerizing novel set in the underworld of contemporary Bombay. Shantaram is narrated by Lin, an escaped convict with a false passport who flees maximum security prison in Australia for the teeming streets of a city where he can disappear. As a hunted man without a home, family, or identity, Lin searches for love and meaning while running a clinic in one of the city's poorest slums, and serving his apprenticeship in the dark arts of the Bombay mafia.

Books I Was Reading Last Year - 2017

Talking as Fast as I Can: From Gilmore Girls to Gilmore Girls, and Everything in Between by Lauren Graham

4/5 Stars: I didn’t create a full review of this book after I read it, but I was pleasantly surprise. Lauren Graham was funny and insightful at times and although it was a lot about Gilmore Girls, Graham added other topics that kept me entertained. I would recommend it to those interested or were still doubtful of reading another memoir from an actor/actress.

Synopsis: In this collection of personal essays, the beloved star of Gilmore Girls and Parenthood reveals stories about life, love, and working as a woman in Hollywood—along with behind-the-scenes dispatches from the set of the new Gilmore Girls, where she plays the fast-talking Lorelai Gilmore once again.

Books I Was Reading Two Years Ago - 2016

The Nest by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney

3/5 Stars: Sorry, no detailed review to share with you for this book either. I do know I didn’t enjoy it. Several times throughout the book I felt it was dragging, there were a lot of random scenes I think could have been cut out as they didn’t add much to the storyline.

Synopsis: Every family has its problems. But even among the most troubled, the Plumb family stands out as spectacularly dysfunctional. Years of simmering tensions finally reach a breaking point on an unseasonably cold afternoon in New York City as Melody, Beatrice, and Jack Plumb gather to confront their charismatic and reckless older brother, Leo, freshly released from rehab. Months earlier, an inebriated Leo got behind the wheel of a car with a nineteen-year-old waitress as his passenger. The ensuing accident has endangered the Plumbs joint trust fund, “The Nest,” which they are months away from finally receiving and have been counting on the money to solve a number of self-inflicted problems. 

Girl Waits with Gun by Amy Stewart

Although an interesting concept since it is based on some true events and has come action, I felt like this book was lacking in certain aspects.

Synopsis: Constance Kopp doesn’t quite fit the mold. She towers over most men, has no interest in marriage or domestic affairs, and has been isolated from the world since a family secret sent her and her sisters into hiding fifteen years ago. One day a belligerent and powerful silk factory owner runs down their buggy, and a dispute over damages turns into a war of bricks, bullets, and threats as he unleashes his gang on their family farm. When the sheriff enlists her help in convicting the men, Constance is forced to confront her past and defend her family — and she does it in a way that few women of 1914 would have dared.