From the Bookshelf of Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge…

Anxious People

Fredrik Backman,

Neil Smith (Translator)

Start date: October 1, 2021

Finish date: October 31, 2021

Discussion: 2021 Monthly Group Reads

Why we're reading this: October 2021 monthly group read for "locked room mystery"…more
[close] October 2021 monthly group read for "locked room mystery"

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2021 Monthly Group Reads

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* 2021 Monthly Group Reads - the Final List of Categories and Books
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What Members Thought

Dec 02, 2020 Angie rated it it was amazing

I loved this book! Usually on road trips I'm easily distracted and can only read a bit before I find myself checking my phone or playing games or something, but I was hooked from the dedication page on! Literally! The book is dedicated to "the voices in my head, the most remarkable of my friends. And to my wife, who lives with us." Substitute husband for wife and I was feeling that dedication in a very real way! Since I was reading in the car without pen and paper to jot down favorite passages, I loved this book! Usually on road trips I'm easily distracted and can only read a bit before I find myself checking my phone or playing games or something, but I was hooked from the dedication page on! Literally! The book is dedicated to "the voices in my head, the most remarkable of my friends. And to my wife, who lives with us." Substitute husband for wife and I was feeling that dedication in a very real way! Since I was reading in the car without pen and paper to jot down favorite passages, I ended up snapping pictures of pages with some of my favorite writing. I took SIXTEEN pictures! I felt like every time I turned the page in the first 25 pages or so there was something screaming "THIS AUTHOR UNDERSTANDS YOU!" Gems like this:

"There's such an unbelievable amount that we're all supposed to be able to cope with these days. You're supposed to have a job, and somewhere to live, and a family, and you're supposed to pay taxes and have clean underwear and remember the password to your damn Wi-Fi. Some of us never manage to get the chaos under control, so our lives simply carry on, the world spinning through space at two million miles an hour while we bounce about on its surface like so many lost socks... We're not in control. So we learn to pretend, all the time, about our jobs and our marriages and our children and everything else. We pretend we're normal..."

and:

"We don't have time to think or breathe, we just wake up and start digging through the heap, because there will be another one dumped on us tomorrow. We look around occasionally, at our place of work or at parents' meeting or out in the street, and realize with horror that everyone else seems to know exactly what they're doing. We're the only ones who have to pretend. Everyone else can afford stuff and has a handle on other stuff and enough energy to deal with even more stuff. And everyone else's children can swim.
But we weren't ready to become adults. Someone should have stopped us."

And I wanted to rush straight to my Moms with ADHD online group and share all the bits of amazingness I was finding. Like this:

"Ten years ago a man was standing on a bridge. This story isn't about that man, so you don't really need to think about him right now. Well, obviously you can't help thinking about him, it's like saying "Don't think about cookies," and now you're thinking about cookies.
Don't think about cookies!" :)

And those were just the life-wise words scattered generously throughout the book!! Then there was the story! And the storytelling! And the characters! And the relationships! And the mystery! At one point, over halfway through the book, I literally gasped "Wait, what?!" and had to go all the way back to the beginning to try and find clues as to how I didn't understand one really important part of the mystery. The writing was brilliant - I don't know how Backman pulled off that part but it was brilliant. (No spoilers!)

It was just all so very, very good!! I haven't gotten this excited about a book in a while. I loved it. This was a library copy, but I'll be buying a personal copy to keep on my very exclusive "Keepers" shelf here at home. ...more

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Sep 25, 2021 Judy rated it it was amazing

Shelves: bookgroup

I loved this book! It feels simple at first, but Backman's nuanced descriptions continue adding to the story, weaving through so much that by the end it has become a profoundly human tale, both sad and joyful. A suggestion to anyone who wants to read it: pay attention - the devil is in the details.

I want to read more of Backman's books! ...more

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