Brittaini’s Comments (group member since Dec 17, 2018)

Brittaini’s comments from the THE GOOD LUCK YEAR END READING CHALLENGE OF 2018 group.

Emily wrote: "I just finished My Sister, The Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite. This book has been all over the place and I was super excited when a friend gave it to me for Christmas. I was expecting it to b..."

I'll take it! I'd love to discuss this one once I have a chance to read it.

@Emily -- the TOB is pretty fun! I like putting together my bracket in March -- I am very anti-sports, but it ignites a little bit of a competitive streak in me :) A book you mentioned in another thread -- My Sister the Serial Killer is on the list year, too.

@Amelia-- The TOB happens in March, and it's basically March madness for books, but with weird things thrown in. Each match is judged by an individual judge, and then all the judges weigh in on the final match to select a winner. Sometimes the winner is predictable, but often there are upsets, and there's a really lively discussion for each match. There There is on the list! the website that puts it on is themorningnews.org.

I finished A Terrible Country a couple of days ago for the TOB, and it was even worse than The Italian Teacher. But I'm working on Washington Black now and it is *much* better.

I didn't set a Goodreads goal this year, and I probably won't next year. My goal for next year is to be a little bit more thoughtful with my reading, and to keep Goodreads up to date with reviews, reflections, etc.

@Cristalyne, oh man, that's tricky. I'm finding that I struggle with more abstract forms of both fiction and non-fiction -- one of my major complaints about a novel I read recently that doesn't count for this challenge due to timing was very vague and theoretical until the very end, which made it hard for me to stay interested in the narrative at all. I mostly just want direct, straightforward narratives in everything I read right now. I am not interested in puzzling things out. All that being said, I'm sure you'll come to the right decision re: what to do about the rating.

The first book I read for the category is The Italian Teacher by Tom Rachman (I'm reading for the Tournament of Books right now, so I'm probably only (or mostly) going to be reading things from 2018 for the next month or so). In a lot of ways it was good -- strong pacing, interesting themes, well developed characters -- but it just wasn't what I wanted right now. I can't identify anything specifically wrong with it and would probably recommend it to the right person, but I think there are some narratives (in addition to ones that are oblique) that I am just not interested in at the moment.