Week 44 Check In

[Susan]

Hello everyone,
Welcome to November. Late autumn has come to New England. Yesterday's wind has blown pretty much all the leaves off the trees (and even blew some trees down near us, thankfully not on anyone's house).

This week I finished both my audiobook and Kindle book. I finished listening to Three Bags Full for neighborhood book club. I'm also using this for the "In Translation" prompt for Book Nerds. I ended up giving it 3 stars. I didn't like the ending as much as I hoped I would. I enjoyed most of the middle of the book but probably won't continue the series.

I finished reading The Restoration Garden. It was pretty good. It is a back-and-forth timeline between the present day and WWII. The ending was just too tidy and fast for me. It didn't match the pacing of the rest of the book. I would have liked to see a bit more character development too. But the content was interesting generally. So I gave it 3 stars for just okay.

I now have White Hot in progress on audiobook. This is book 2 after Burn for Me. I'm only a couple chapters in but so far enjoying as much as the first in the series.

QOTW:
What popular books did not live up to the hype for you? Why didn’t it work for you?

I have so many. I am apparently not like the people who love the popular books I guess. There are at least three specific books that always come to mind when I see this on Reddit.
A Man Called Ove: Page one Ove is said to be 58. He acts like he's 85. I was late-50s when I read this and NO ONE I know lives or behaves like that. He is portrayed SO OLD. That one detail really clouded the whole thing for me.

Lessons in Chemistry: It was just so unrealistic for the time period it was set in. The MC was not likable. I worked my whole life in a male-dominated field also but she was so unpleasant.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow: Ugh, the characters behaved like children for the entire book, even as they supposedly aged.

I have more (anything Kristin Hannah) but will stop here.

[Rebecca]

I hope everyone who celebrates had a fun Halloween! I continued my tradition of making a pumpkin-based meal.

Carmilla - This was a quick spooky season read. I hesitate to say it, given the interminable nature of many gothic novels, but it might have been too short? Not a lot of time to build up a sense of creeping dread, some loose ends that didn't necessarily need to be wrapped up but were basically unacknowledged ((view spoiler)[who were the "mother" and entourage? why the twelve-year gap? (hide spoiler)]). I do think it's worth reading as a foundational work in the genre that has a surprisingly modern feel.

Spider in the Well - Also selected for spooky season, although it is not really spooky but rather aggressively orange. It was funnier than I expected but kind of a surrealist fable without a moral, or something. I can see it hitting with a certain type of weird kid.

QOTW: The first one that came to mind is Life of Pi. I read it while it was all the rage everywhere and was like, "Did I miss something?" Fortunately one of my friends also had the same experience so I felt somewhat validated.