It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? a place to meet up and share what you have been, and are about to be reading over the week. It’s a great post to organise yourself. It’s an opportunity to visit and comment and er… add to your groaning TBR pile! So welcome in everyone. This meme started on J Kaye’s blog and then was hosted by Sheila from Book Journey. Sheila then passed it on to Kathryn here at The Book Date. Jen Vincent, Teach Mentor Texts, and Kellee of Unleashing Readers decided to give It’s Monday! a kidlit focus. If you read and review books in children’s literature – picture books, chapter books, middle grade novels, young adult novels or anything in those genres – join them.
I hope you all had a great week. I’ve spent most of this post trying to figure out how WordPress works in these blocks layout. Driving me crazy but I’ve got something together!
When I went back to the library to return my books I enquired at the desk and found my card had been handed in. Funny how happy I was to be reunited with it!
I did have a good reading week. Sometimes reading just goes down smoothly. Really enjoyed them all. Poet X was a surprise to me in that I zipped through it. I almost just returned it to the library but decided to give it a go. Loved it! YA coming of age story written in a kind of a verse. Very moving.
What I read last week:
What I am reading now:
I am just starting to read this today from my TBR shelf.
And I am listening to
Up next:
A review book.
Last Week’s Posts
Writers in Characters in Books
In Beach Read we have January – a romance author who just can’t get the deadline book written. She has lost her father in the last year and has had another nasty shock as well and she really isn’t dealing. She goes to the beach house her father has left her, and finds out her neighbour is Gus, a literary fiction writer and they went to writing college together. And so the tango begins. Emily Henry will eventually get January to the place where she can write, but how she does that… well I can’t give that away. I don’t think this book is a beach read, or an out and out romance, more a mash up of sorts!
Another book I’ve just recently read also has a romance author struggling to write. Kaylee has just recently experienced a loss and takes off to Virgin River to write in a quiet spot where she can hopefully write. Will Virgin River be able to work that kind of magic for her?
Another by Robyn Carr, this time a stand alone from quite awhile back -1999. One of my keepers. This has just not one author in the book but a group of friends who are authors and all struggling in one way or another, but especially over the death of a friend. I feel a reread coming along.
I really enjoyed this book, it was excellent. Again it is about four writers. One of them has her life fall apart and the other three come to her rescue. To help her they co author her book that must be written to meet a deadline. Of course no one else knows that. Each chapter starts with a wonderful little quote that are gems in themselves. It is extremely well written and once started fully engages the reader. As I was reading I found plenty to enjoy and ponder on. Another keeper on my bookshelf from 2009 and I need a reread of this one too.
Firstly its made me want to actually read the first Pride and Prejudice so I have ordered the book – the annotated version. I thought while I was buying it I’d get the notes that might help me get a feel for and better appreciation for those times. If the notes become too much I’ll just pick and choose! We’ll see how I get on.
In the meantime I watched this version of the movie on Netflix and thoroughly enjoyed it. Just the scenery alone would make me enjoy it, but I feel I got a handle on the characters, and I could see how the audiobook Unmarriageable that I am listening to is so close a retelling as you’d most likely get. With a Pakistan flavour though!
Well of course I wanted to watch this one too, but couldn’t find a place I could stream it from here in NZ. So I ordered the DVD’s from a local online store. My DVD player isn’t the best but hopefully it will manage it. I think I have seen this years ago on TV but I ask – who wouldn’t want to watch it again!
I want to watch or actually re watch this, as I have seen it before on TV. However now I want to see it again as I freshen up my memory. Also I really like Keri Russell as an actress. I can stream this one I think from Apple TV and probably a few other places. Oh and I see there is a book called Austenland by Shannon Hale might be interesting, but I’ll watch the movie version first.
And while I am falling down the rabbit hole of Pride and Prejudice I thought I’d add this book into my reading, a modern retelling that has given many of the readers I follow happy reading. Plus I have been wanting to try a Curtis Sittenfeld book.
I fully expected to like this one, (library book) but I just found myself not able to get into it. I think possibly it was the first person point of view with the constant train of thought process. Another day it might have been for me, but I just wasn’t in the mood. So a good book – a 3.84 rating on Goodreads with over 11 500 ratings.
PS I Love You, I gave it longer than I should. While it had an important issue, the tone of the book felt odd and I got sick of the pubs and the drinking so in the end I couldn’t hang in there. I sent it on by donating it to the book fair. Another good book, it has a rating of 4.2 on Goodreads and over 355 000 have rated it.
I know this one is regarded as a kind of classic, and again I really wanted to like it. But it was just a little too serious and long and dusty for me, so after awhile I decided to donate it to the book fair as well and declare defeat. On Goodreads it has a rating of 4.48 from over 146 000 ratings.
And here is another book I crashed and burned on. On being a little way in I have decided I am not the audience for this book. So far the heroine is whiny and first person narrative has to be really good to hold me. I also don’t appreciate the language, so I am not prepared to commit valuable reading time to it. I am sure though other audiences will possibly be quite happy to read it. It has a Goodreads rating of 3.85 with ratings from over 1380 readers.
I didn’t write my thoughts at the time about this one so I think I didn’t get very far into it and returned it to the library for more appreciative readers. Maybe I didn’t give it enough chance or could have been too literary for me. Goodreads rating is 3.74 from almost 32 000 ratings.
I have mentioned Ten Thousand Doors of January before – its sort of fantasy, imaginative, magic and coming of age story. Yes I do want to read this author again and her next book comes out in about a month. I’ll be reading it.
This one has Canadian/Muslim/Indian culture vibes and is a retelling of Pride and Prejudice. I’ve mentioned it before but this time just noting its a debut novel that published 2019. No sign of another book as yet, but I’d read it if she did write another, in the meantime this is worthy of a reread at some point.
Evvie Drake Starts Over was another 2019 debut novel I really liked listening to the audiobook version last year. I can’t see any sign of another novel but I’ll check again because I’d certainly read another by Linda Holmes. The characters and situation was well explored.