Jessica’s Comments (group member since Nov 09, 2013)

Jessica’s comments from the Cedar Falls Public Library group.

After reading the rest of Kate Atkinson's novels, I decided to try her crime fiction, which is a "beach read" for me. I read the first one, Case Histories, which I enjoyed, and I just started the second one, One Good Turn, but I'm having a hard time getting into it.

I recently read Behind the Scenes at the Museum and I adored it, 5 stars. Atkinson is great at writing dense, interesting, moving novels with a dark comic edge.

I have read a lot of books by comedians, probably too many to name here, and humor essay collections like those of Sedaris (Naked is my favorite). I do enjoy humorous fiction, like Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams and To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis (both are also sci-fi, by the way). The last book that made me laugh out loud was A Load of Hooey by Bill Odenkirk.

I have read the Game of Thrones series through the last book, which was #5. After book 3 I began finding the books laborious to read: more and more supporting characters being introduced, long passages of not much happening, and some weird supernatural stuff. I do like the complexity of the characters though, no one is entirely good or bad and their choices/behaviors continued to surprise me.

I love Neil Gaiman. In addition to Good Omens and The Ocean at the End of the Lane, I've also read Neverwhere, Stardust, and Coraline, all of which I would recommend; they are short, imaginative reads. I enjoyed The Golem and the Jinni quite a bit.
I also really like Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell. I tend to enjoy the sort of fantasy that borders with magical realism, so stories about fantastical places and characters with special abilities but still part of a realistic world find their way onto my shelf.
I don't normally read short stories, but Kelly Link is fabulous at fantasy short fiction for adults and YA.

I guess I could sort of see The Magician's Lie being similar to Water for Elephants, but not so much The Night Circus. I was a little disappointed that there wasn't much detail about Waterloo/Janesville, as the description leads the reader to expect the location to be more important than it actually turns out to be. It could still be a contender for an Iowa read though.

Lately I've been reading about other people reading. Ridiculous, yes, but even so, it's been interesting. I read The Year of Reading Dangerously by Andy Miller, in which a man decides to become better read; it was a fun to see his thoughts on books I've read (and add some of his recommendations to my to-read list) and watch him rediscover the pleasure of reading. Rather light, but it's still nonfiction. I'm currently reading a similar book called Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading. It's not nearly as pleasant, as the focus seems to be on the author's use of reading a book a day for one year as a way of processing her grief over her sister's death. It's rather self-indulgent and she doesn't write enough about the books she's reading; the title is a bit misleading, which annoys me.

In Cold Blood is amazing.

I just watched This is Where I Leave You. It was pretty good, but I think I would have enjoyed it more if I hadn't read the book first. The screenplay was actually written by the same author as the novel, so the adaptation was faithful, but it didn't pack the same emotional punch as the book.

Well, this is backwards for your question, but I recently read Jonathan Tropper's This is Where I Leave You, which was made into a movie last year. I'm hoping to watch it finally in the next week or two, so I'll let you know what I think of it.

Station Eleven looks interesting, you'll have to let me know how it goes Amy; I'm adding it to my to-read list.

For a few weeks I was reading horror/speculative fiction, and I highly recommend The Bird Box by Josh Malerman, a story that follows a woman who has been living alone with two children for four years without outside contact because a mysterious phenomenon has killed off everyone else she knows, and now she is going to risk everything in order to find a sanctuary with other survivors. I also enjoyed Black Moon by Kenneth Calhoun, in which the population has been struck with a condition that inhibits sleep, resulting in a divide between insomniacs driven insane with rage and "sleepers," who must hide their ability to sleep or be killed by mobs of the "sleepless."

I also noticed that many of the winners were either part of a series or by authors everyone has heard of. As readers, have we lost our sense of adventure?

I was surprised at some of the results of Goodreads Best Books. For example, Rainbow Rowell's Landline won Best Fiction, which was only so-so in my opinion. I know it's based on votes, but jeepers!

I see that Sarah Waters' The Paying Guests and David Mitchell's The Bone Clocks also made the list on Amazon's best books of 2014. I enjoyed both of the those; Sarah Waters is one of my favorite writers. The Bone Clocks was...dense and long, but interesting; the structure of the book and the interconnected characters remind me very much of his book Cloud Atlas.

I really liked All the Light We Cannot See, and I've also read Everything I Never Told You, which was one of those fraught-family books and kind of reminded me of The Husband's Secret. I'll have to check out the list on Amazon to see what else is there.

I also really liked Before I Go to Sleep, The Girl on the Train actually reminded me of it a bit. I've read Cartwheel, Gone Girl, and Elizabeth is Missing, and liked them all pretty well. Elizabeth is Missing, like Before I Go to Sleep and The Girl on the Train, deals with a narrator with an unreliable memory, which keeps the reader on their toes. I read The Husband's Secret, but didn't love it; the epilogue was the most interesting thing about it, the rest was a book about women and their woman-y problems, which isn't necessarily my cup of tea.

This one isn't quite available yet (I won an advance review copy, but it's publishing date is January), but I would highly recommend it for suspense fiction: The Girl on the Train: A Novel by Paula Hawkins. It's hard to describe without giving too much away, but a lonely alcoholic named Rachel takes the train every day and fantasizes about the occupants of a house she sees from through the train window on a regular basis. The female half of this couple disappears, and Rachel finds herself drawn into the case. To complicate matters Rachel's drinking problem sometimes results in blackouts, leaving holes in her memory and making people reluctant to trust her. This book kept me guessing!

Here are some other historical fiction titles that I have really enjoyed and would recommend:
The Lost Wife by Alyson Richman (WWII, couple torn apart by war)
Burial Rites by Hannah Kent (accused murderess in her final months before execution in 19th century Iceland)
The Other Typist by Suzanne Rindell (1920s USA, friendship between two women, unreliable narrator)
Belle Cora by Philip Margullies (1800s USA, the life and times of a notorious woman who reinvents herself multiple times in different parts of the country)
And pretty much anything by Sarah Waters.

I really liked The Miniaturist. It had a bit of magical realism, which I like and would have preferred to see more of here. I would have given it 4 stars but there were a few loose ends and bewildering moments that I couldn't quite swallow.