It's book talk time!!!
Have you ever gone through a reading slump?
Reading slumps are when you have a hard time getting into books. Even books you want to read, awesome books, just sound kind of...meh, and reading is slow, slow, slow. Nothing really grabs you. You try books, then put them down after a few pages. You grab that one book that you've been wanting to read for ages...and you have to force yourself to read any of it. Even though it's a fantastic book.
It's frustrating.
Once or twice a year, my brain does this and I'm never sure why. Information overload? Needing a break? Who knows. I'm kind of there now (although I'm really enjoying the book I've been reading lately, and I have a book from the library that I'm looking forward to, so we'll see how it works out), and it's been a somewhat frustrating month- I just haven't felt all that enthusiastic about reading altogether. No worries, I'll get back to my usual excitement sometime soon, once my brain is done throwing this tantrum. ;)
Anyway, here's what I read this past month.
1. Culture Shock! Norway- Elizabeth Su-Dale
I'm always interested in reading things about Norway (and there's not a lot out there, surprisingly), and I've enjoyed books from the Culture Shock! series in the past, but this book didn't really do it for me and I kind of had to slog to get through it. For one, it's extremely dated at this point; it was written before the internet took over and I'm positive that a lot of the info here is massively out of date. I'm wondering if it's just not a profitable book to update and that's why it hasn't happened, because this book definitely needs it. Total bummer for me.
2. Marking Time: The Radium Girls of Ottawa- Heinz Dietrich Suppan
Years ago, I took a history class from this author. Super nice guy; he's the child of immigrants and grew up speaking German at home (I was dating my born-in-Belgium-and-raised-here-but-spoke-French-at-home husband at the time, so Mr. Suppan and I bonded over the whole navigating-two-cultures-and-being-bilingual thing). Seriously the best history class I've ever taken. He threw down SO much information during each class that I often left with my head spinning and exams were tough, but I learned so much. He absolutely knows his stuff and is a great teacher.
This is a very short book on a topic that absolutely infuriated me- so much that I had to set the book down a few times and take several calming breaths in order to not burst into flames. Women were hired to paint clock faces, but they were painting those clock faces with radium and using a technique called lip pointing, which is where they would stick the tip of the radium coated-brush in their mouths to make it pointy. And of course, they all started dying of radium poisoning, while the company was all, "Pffffft, it's not the radium, they're just loose women who are dying of syphilis, because everyone knows radium is actually good for you!" Over and over they denied it, while more and more women suffered and died in horrible, horrible ways.
RAGE.
I'd definitely like to read more about this, but I'm going to have to wait until I can mentally/emotionally handle it, because things like this make me want to start screaming and never stop.
3. What If- A.J. Pine
A New Adult romance, featuring a guy who's the black sheep of his family and a young woman struggling to overcome the affect of a brain aneurysm.
This really wasn't bad. I really liked that it went through all the things that Maggie had to do to get through her days- setting timers so that she'd leave for work in time, packing her 'just-in-case' pills in her purse, Post-It notes and Polaroids to aid her short-term memory, etc. We need more disability representation in fiction. I personally would have liked more of the technicalities of her condition, more medical information. It seemed to me like the author was assuming we all knew about brain aneurysm and its after-effects, but I didn't, and I found that learning about it (what little of the technicalities we learned) as the story unfolded left me feeling kind of unmoored. I would've liked to see more doctor appointments, maybe a support group or a therapist, things that helped to deepen the reader's understanding of what Maggie had been through and how hard she had to fight to get to where she was when the story started, because all that seemed just a little too vague for my taste.
But really, this was a neat premise for a story and I enjoyed it.
4. Timeless- Alexandra Monir
I adore time travel romance.
My mom used to have a stash of romance novels in our downstairs closet and a bunch of them were historical and time travel romances, and I read the heck out of them when I was 12/13. I need to read more from this genre again, I think.
So I was all excited about the concept of this book. After the death of her single mother, Michele moves in with her super rich, estranged grandparents, and while snooping through some stuff, finds an old diary that sends her back in time. And while she's there, helping out a family member, she meets the guy she's been dreaming about (literally, like dreaming-while-she's-sleeping) for years and they fall in love (even though no one else can see her and so he's actually kind of macking on a ghost, so to speak, and they don't find this weird). But of course, there are complications, both in the present and in the past.
I don't know. I didn't feel like the writing here was strong enough to carry the story. It lacked emotional depth for me. Michele as a character seemed flat, and the romance was rushed to the point of being a little ridiculous. I did like the grandparents- I felt like the author was able to portray the stiffness of an emotionally reserved upper class couple really well- and I completely agreed with Michele's acceptance of older Phillip in the last scenes, I felt that was really well done. But the drawn-out descriptions of the past architecture got old really quickly. I'm not a fan of heavy description in general, and it was clear that the author had done a ton of research and knew her stuff , but it ended up reading like a giant info dump every time Michele ventured out into town when she time traveled.
So this wasn't for me, and I'll keep searching for more time travel romance. If you have any suggestions, I'd love to hear them!!!
5. Crazy Pucking Love- Cindi Madsen
I'm also a sucker for a good hockey romance.
Dane's a college hockey player; Megan's the new freshman student and sister of another hockey player on the team. She's worked hard to overcome some wild behavior in the past and he's dealing with a lot of drama from back home. They're both under a lot of pressure, but the attraction is immediate. The catch: Megan's brother doesn't want any of the guys on the team coming anywhere near his little sister (because he's super overprotective, because of course their parents are dead- New Adult books are worse than Disney movies when it comes to killing off parents, anyone else notice that? I mean, I get it- it's the easiest way to force your character to grow up, get the parents out of the picture- but I'd like to see some NA books featuring characters from decent, supportive families. You can still deal with plenty of problems even if you have awesome parents, really! And now I have writing ideas. Thanks, brain).
The story follows Megan and Dane as they figure their crap out so they can be together. It's well-written, it's fun, and even though I got a little tired of Dane's constant back-and-forth, I enjoyed this. It's a decent one to check out if you're also a hockey romance fan. ;)
6. The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers- Maxwell King
Read this book.
Read it now.
This should be at the top of your list.
Oh, Mister Rogers. What a special man he was, and how lucky we all were to share the planet with him. I grew up watching him, listening to his gentle voice and the ding of his Trolley, joining him on trips to the crayon factory and construction sites, smiling as he changed into his cardigan and soft-soled canvas shoes. He was an integral part of my childhood and even today, I look to him as a role model. What would Mister Rogers do? is something I often ask myself when I'm struggling with how to act or react.
This book humanizes him. He wasn't perfect or saintly; he had his faults like everyone else (I love, love, love that he seemed as baffled by parenting teenagers as everyone else out there), but man, overall, he was just a really, really good person. A genuine person. The same person you saw on TV was the same person you got when you met him in the flesh. I can't think of anyone these days who is so genuine, so real, so worthy of emulation and respect as Fred Rogers was. I often wonder, though, how he would react to the events of today, how disappointed he'd be in the nastiness that fills public discourse. I know he would have wept openly at the horrifying massacre at the synagogue this past weekend- that happened about three blocks from where he lived. That was literally Mister Rogers' neighborhood. He would have been the first person there to comfort the victims, I'm positive of it.
Anyway, this book is a gorgeous tribute to one of the best humans who ever existed. There were several times I laughed out loud at the stories told, stories that made him seem so very real and such a wonderful man. More than ever, we need Fred Rogers' humanity in our lives, and I'm glad this book is out there.
7. The Search Angel- Tish Cohen
Eleanor, owner of the city's most exclusive baby store, wants a baby of her own, and she and her husband are on the brink of picking up the baby girl they're adopting when her husband, who has been all in on this plan, suddenly bails. In order to do this on her own, Eleanor, who is adopted herself, needs to build a support system (because her parents have passed already, and she was an only child), and she does this by...trying to find her birth mother in several days?
There are about a million things wrong with this plan, none of which are ever really dwelt upon in the book, and that bothered me. What if birth mom was dead? A terrible person? Addicted to drugs, homeless, just straight up didn't want contact, living in a foreign country, etc? Eleanor didn't have a plan beyond 'Find her and she'll be a support system so that the adoption agency will allow me to adopt this baby.' I was a bit aghast that this wasn't covered.
We don't really even meet the Search Angel until about halfway through the book. Isabelle has dedicated her life to reuniting adoptees and their birth families, and though she's retired, Eleanor gets to her in a way that forces her to help. Isabelle's character is so over-the-top that she's completely enjoyable, whereas the slowly blossoming romance between Eleanor and the shop owner next door didn't feel very real to me (and her constantly pregnant shop assistant, whom Eleanor marked as a terrible mother... I don't know. I wasn't a huge fan of that character, either). I did like seeing Eleanor's struggles as a single mother portrayed so accurately, although I kind of wanted to smack her after she was complaining about being tired after one night of being awake most of the night (miss me with that crap; come back after you haven't slept more than three hours at a time for EIGHTEEN FRICKIN' MONTHS, LADY, NOT THAT I'M STILL BITTER ABOUT THIS AT ALL OMG), but then when the baby's biological father comes back, and Eleanor's flipping out and then there's stuff going on with the shop owner next door, and Isabelle has issues with her past, and Eleanor's ex is hot and cold, and...There's just a lot going on at the end that made it seem a little overstuffed. So I didn't quite love this the way I was hoping.
So that's it for October. Only seven books in a month is low for me, but...reading slump. It happens. Life's been a little crazy around here lately, too, so hopefully things will maybe-hopefully-possibly start to slow down a bit ("HAHAHAHAHA," says the holiday-filled calendar!). I'm reading a Kindle book right now, and then I'll move on to a book from the library, something someone just suggested on a Facebook group I'm in, and then we'll see where I'm at after that. I'd like to go back to reading some of the books on my Goodread list, maybe interspersed with some Kindle books, because I need more fiction in my life right now (and my Goodreads list is nonfiction-heavy).
What did you read in October?
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