Jumping Right Back In

Hello,

Well, it's been awhile.  I'm still reading books, just a lot less of them.  I now read a year what I use to read in 3 months, not feeling one hundred about it, but what can I do.  As I'm getting older my attention span has gone downhill.

I've read 12 books in 2016 so far, and have DNF'd one.



My favorites are:

A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
Leave Me by Gayle Forman

My least favorites are:

The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers  DNF'd
Cherry by Lindsey Rosin




I'm currently reading:

The Nix by Nathan Hill
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Ghostland:  An American History in Haunted Places by Colin Dickey  AUDIOBOOK

New Ebooks

Adeline: A Novel of Virginia Woolf

Author:  Norah Vincent

Publisher:  Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Publication Date:  April 2nd 2015

From Goodreads:  

On April 18, 1941, twenty-two days after Virginia Woolf went for a walk near her weekend house in Sussex and never returned, her body was reclaimed from the River Ouse.  Norah Vincent's Adeline reimagines the events that brought Woolf to the riverbank, offering us a denouement worthy of it's protagonist.

With poetic precision and psychological acuity, Vincent channels Virginia and leonard Woolf, T.S. Aand Vivienne Eliot, Lytton Strachey and Dora Carrington, laying bare their genius and their blind spots, their achievements and their failings, from the inside out.   And haunting every page is Adeline, the name given to Virginia Stephen at birth, which becomes the source of Virginia's greatest consolation, and her greatest torment. 

Bittersweet

Author:  Miranda Beverly-Whitemore

Publisher:  Broadway Books

Publication Date: May 13, 2014

From Goodreads: 

On scholarship at a prestigious East Coast college, ordinary Mabel Dagmar is surprised to befriend her roommate, the beautiful, wild, blue-blooded Genervra Winslow.  Ev invites Mabel to spend the summer at Bittersweet, her cottage on the Vermont estate where her family has been holding court for more than a century; it's the kind of place where children twirl sparklers across the lawn during cocktail hour.  Mabel falls in love with midnight skinny-dipping, the wet dog smell that lingers near the yachts, and the moneyed laughter that carries across the still lake while fireworks burst overhead.  Before she knows it, she has everything she's ever wanted:  friendship, a boyfriend, access to wealth, and, most of all, for the first time in her life, the sense that she belongs.

But as Mabel becomes an insider, a terrible discovery leads to shocking violence and reveals what the Winslows may have done to keep their power intact - and what they might do to anyone who threatens them.  Mabel must choose: either expose the ugliness surrounding her and face expulsion from paradise, or keep the family's dark secrets and make Ev's world her own. 

Girl at War

Author:  Sara Novic

Publisher:  Random House

Publication Date:  May 12th 2015

From Goodreads:

Zagreb, summer of 1991.  Ten year old Ana Juric is carefree tomboy who runs the streets of Croatia's capital with her best friend, Luka, takes care of her baby sister, Rahela, and idolizes her father.  But as a civil war breaks out across Yugoslavia, soccer games and school lessons are supplanted by sniper fire and air raid drills.  When tragedy suddenly strikes, Ana is lost a world of guerilla warfare and child soldiers; a daring escape plan to America becomes her only chance for survival.

Ten years later Ana is a college student in New York.  She's been hiding her past from her boyfriend, her friends, and most especially herself.  Haunted by the events that forever changed her family, she returns alone to Croatia, where she must rediscover the place that was once her home and search for the ghosts of those she's lost.  

Currently Reading

Audio

Since You've Been Gone by Morgan Matson

Genre:  Young Adult

I understand that the aimed age for this is teens, so I completely forgive it for making me roll my eyes, finding it all silly.  I'm over 60% into the audio, I am not giving up....i'm in too deep.  

This Sloan character..ugh.

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Paperback

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

Genre: Literary Fiction, Historical  Fiction, Mystery

Only 60 pages into this, but I am loving it already.  Figuring out the whole "novel within a novel" part of The Blind Assassin took a couple pages more than I wanted, but I am smooth sailing now.  

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Ebook

I Love You More by Jennifer Murphy

Genre:  Mystery

Not far in, but enjoying the writing style.  

The Unfortunate Importance of Beauty by Amanda Filipacchi

 The Unfortunate Importance of Beauty 

Author:  Amanda Filipacchi

Publisher:  W.W. Norton and Company

Publication Date:  February 16th 2015

Goodreads

What is the importance of beauty?  Fillipacchi explores both sides to this question in the satirical novel, The Unfortunate Importance of Beauty.  Barb, a breathtaking beautiful woman wears a fat suit, being beautiful is too hard, and has only caused her heartbreak. She seeks a man who will love her not for her beauty but for her heart.  Lily, a gifted musician is unattractive and in love with a man known for dating only beautiful women.

This book is funny, poking fun of today's crazy unhealthy obsession with beauty, the author adds magical realism to push the subject even more;  also, there is a murder mystery storyline that is not and cannot be taken serious, it's odd (in a good way) and comical.

Recommended if you like dark comedies, satire, magical realism.

May Overview and a Look Into What I'll be Reading in June

How many books did I read in the month of May:

Zero

I've been working my way through Game of Thrones since the beginning of the month and took a rest from reading a day or two here and there throughout the month.  I'm really enjoying the book, I just need a break from it now and then, and I didn't pick up another book during the month at all.  Around the middle of the month I started to stress about not having completed a book, my husband reminded me I read not as a contest to read a certain amount but for the enjoyment. It was a nice little pep talk he gave me. :) I'm currently 10 books behind in my Goodreads Challenge, but that's okay.  

June 6th is my kids last day of school and I am so looking forward to it.  No more running around playing chauffeur, and that equals more reading. I'm a mood reader so I never post a TBR pile but in June I have two books that need to be reviewed that I won from LibraryThing.  I will definitely be reading Stoker's Manuscript by Royce Prouty and Proxy by Alex London.  Looking forward to reading them.

My husband started working a 2 month night shift at his job so we had to put our husband and wife book club on hold for those two months...currently have 2 wks left on nights and one of those weeks he will be off for one of his vacation weeks.     It always feels like he has less free time when he's on nights. We will be back at it in June and our selection is The Litigators by John Grisham.  Really excited about The Litigators, it's been awhile since i've read a John Grisham novel.  

My favorite player Manu Ginobili
Photo from Yahoo.Sports.com

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I have mentioned before on here that I am a huge NBA fan particularly of the San Antonio Spurs.  May was a fabulous  months for us Spurs fans, we won the Western Conference Finals and are headed to the NBA Finals where we will either play the Miami Heat or Indiana Pacers.  This is a huge thing in my house and the reason why my husband is taking one of his vacations.  He refused to be working while the Finals are on.  He works hard so he deserves it. :)

Happy Reading!

Wedding Night by Sophie Kinsella

Wedding Night
Author:  Sophie Kinsella
Publisher:  Bantam Press
Publication Date:  April 23rd 2013
Rating:  2 Stars


From Goodreads:

 Lottie is tired of long-term boyfriends who don't want to commit to marriage.  When her old boyfriend Ben reappears and reminds her of their pact to get married if they were both still single at thirty, she jumps at the chance.  There will be no dates and no engagement - just a straight wedding march to the alter.  Next comes the honeymoon on the Greek island where they first met.  But not everyone is thrilled with Lottie and Ben's rushed marriage, and family and friends are determined to intervene.  Will Lottie and Ben have a wedding night to remember or one to forget?



I'm a fan of Sophie Kinsella, though the last couple of Shopaholic books were not great. I just had to mention that.  I was hoping to really enjoy Wedding Night, I didn't.  It's a bummer because I was totally looking forward to this one.  One of the things I love about Sophie Kinsella books is that i'm guaranteed a laugh, even if overall I didn't enjoy it.   I did laugh a couple of times with Wedding Night, so that's definitely a plus and the reason for my 2 rating.   Our heroine Lottie and her sister Fliss say, think and do some pretty funny things.

  Lottie is a frustrating character. I know, I know most of her main characters are slightly frustrating but Lottie for me was just too much...TOO MUCH.  She didn't seem bright, or thirty.  At times I felt that there was no way someone could be this ditzy.  Now that I think about it, most of her heroines are, but Lottie really just irritated me. Becky Bloomwood from the the Shopaholic series also made foolish decisions but it was just fun, with Lottie, what propelled her was just not wanting to say "your right" to people, so she continued on her way knowing it's all wrong.  I love the men in Sophie Kinsella's books, but in Wedding Night I didn't like any of them.  There is nothing appealing about them.   I can't even particularly pinpoint what it was about them that didn't do it for me.

During Ben and Lottie's honeymoon they meet up with a another couple on honeymoon and compete on some couples contest, the whole thing reminded me so much of the scene in Just Go With It. You know, when Jennifer Aniston and Nicole Kidman get competitive.  I felt it was a rip off in a way.  The thing with chick lit is, it's all been done before, so it's hard to make things stand out.

I would not recommend Wedding Night, especially if you can't stand stupid characters and situations.

Musing Mondays 5/6

A weekly meme hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading.

Muse Mondays ask you to muse about one of the following each week...

• Describe one of your reading habits.

• Tell us what book(s) you recently bought for yourself or someone else, and why you chose that/those book(s).

• What book are you currently desperate to get your hands on?  Tell us about it!

• Do you have a bookish rant?  Something about books or reading (or the industry) that gets your fire up?  Share it with us!

• Tell us what you're reading right now - what you think of it, so far;  why you chose it;  what you are (or, aren't) enjoying it.

• Instead of the above questions, maybe you just want to ramble on about something else pertaining to books - let's hear it, then!

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I'm currently reading A Dual Inheritance by Joanna Hershon.  I got this from Netgalley for review.  I'm about 20 percent in and it's slow moving, I'm not into it yet.  Right now the author is setting up the characters, and I'm not finding them relatable.    A Dual Inheritance comes out tomorrow, hopefully I can get it read by the end of this week.