Recent Good Reads

I went through kind of a dry spell there. I was reading a stack'o'books for a contest and couldn't blog about them (which is fair, since I'm scoring them). But that was a month of reading that I couldn't write about. And while there were some good books in the pile, sadly, there was nothing astonishing that I felt like I had to break the rules to tell you about, so I was eager to get back to my planned reading.

And I'm back! Honestly, I'm loving being back on the Kindle--real books felt so heavy in my hands. Isn't that wussy? And the formatting kept distracting me. I love that on the Kindle all books read the same, formatting-wise (or should), so there's nothing to keep you from plunging into the story.

Horizon, by Sophie Littlefield 

This is the third book in Sophie's Aftertime series. Disclaimer: Sophie is one of my favorite people. She's who you call when you want to be good, and she's who you call when you want to be very bad. And when things go wrong? She's the first to call you. I'm honored to call her a friend. 

And it's a good thing she's a friend, because if she weren't, I'd have to hate her for her talent. She is the MASTER of emotion. She can wring so much out of a seemingly simple sentence that you just kind of sit there, stunned, asking "Where did that come from?" 

I'd say this: read the first one, Aftertime. It's scary and post-apocalyptic (not my usual fare but I gobbled it up) and wonderful. I won't tell you much more, but know this: you'll be hooked. I loved the second book, Rebirth, also. But Horizon blew me out of the water. It's an absolutely stunning conclusion. 

 

A Bad Idea I'm About To Do: True Tales of Seriously Poor Judgment and Stunningly Awkward Adventure, Chris Gethard

This one was a fluke. I can't remember where I read about it, but it was one of those sample chapters I threw at my Kindle while running by, and I loved it. It's a brief, painful, humorous memoir (the best kind) of a seriously funny manic-depressive. From chapters on his intestinal woes to pro-wrestling, he moved through a landscape that was so solidly male that if asked, I would have guessed it wouldn't have been a book for me. Too male, I would have thought. Too something. But his humility and capacity to relentlessly poke at himself made each chapter lovely, and I roared through it in a day in bed sick with the flu. 

 

 

Falling For Me: How I Hung Curtains, Learned to Cook, Traveled to Seville, and Fell in Love, Anna David

Confession: If a memoir is about a privileged 30-something woman learning to do something we all think we should be able to do (but sometimes can't) on a journey of self-discovery framed by a device, no matter how clumsy said device might be, I'm IN* (see My Year With Eleanor, a book this one is reminding me of). Really, I'm in. Anna David finds Helen Gurley Brown's 60s classic Sex and the Single Girl and decided to try living her life by its tenets in order to see if she can figure herself out a little more (and maybe catch a man along the way. Okay, no, she establishes firmly that this is NOT what the experiment is about. But she's candid enough to share that the idea keeps rearing its head).

I'm not done with this one yet and I'm guessing by its subtle title that perhaps a man does come along, but I'm enjoying it enough that I'm sharing it now. 

*Oh, I just realized I'm so in, I wrote one of those myself. Hmmm. 

Now, since I'm in the light-hearted secretly-kind-of-deep memoir mood, Sophie's novel notwithstanding, anything you recommend?