I read The Book of Strange New Things because amazon kept telling me about it again and again. I decided it was time to finally sit down and try to tackle it.
And it required so much work to get through this book.
It was strange and strange and strange.
It’s one of the most unusual books I’ve read in…. maybe ever.
It was strange enough that I couldn’t even decide if I liked it or didn’t like it, in the end. But I will say that I am glad I read it. Not even sure why, though. I just feel like I am glad I stuck with it.
I read All the Bright Places for my Young Adult book club. It was so sad. So so so sad. But also such a good read. I read it all in one breath. And I really enjoyed it.
After all the dystopian YA novels, now there seems to be a slew of “terribly sad” YA about mental and emotional challenges of teenagers. In fairness, these issues are likely more realistic. They deserve attention and thought. They are more likely to happen than the Maze Runner scenario.
But that’s also why they are so much harder to take.
And here we are for day twenty-two.
I wanted to document a little bit about who we are in this moment. So I took several journaling pages and wrote what I like right now, what the kids and Jake like, too and then one for our highlights of 2015. I actually might do a bigger one that’s for 2015 highlights since i love looking back on those later, too.
I really like how this one turned out. These multi-pocket pages are really fun to look at and to do.
I read The Girl on the Train because there was a lot of hype around it. Amazon recommended it. It was supposed to be like Gone Girl but much better. I am not sure why that convinced me since I hated Gone Girl so much.
But I picked it up anyway. I read it really fast. I liked it better than Gone Girl. Partly because the ending wasn’t such a twist ending for me. But I still don’t think it was a good book. I am so done with books where all the characters are unlikeable. What’s the point? What does it teach me about life?
Meh.
Not recommended.
I read Us because it was on the Man Booker Prize Longlist. It took me a long time to make my way through the book. I felt like it was so sad that it dragged on and on.
Having said that, I thought it was also pithy and heartbreaking. I loved the ending. I was interested in and invested in the characters. It was just sad enough that I didn’t feel like going back and reading more and more of it.
In the end, I am glad I read it. Some of the book’s thoughts stayed with me still now.
I read Grasshopper Jungle for my Young Adult book club and man oh man was it insane. It was incredibly painful to even make it through this book. There is a ton of creepy, weird, gross stuff in this book and I am not even sure I get the point of the book.
It was my first Andrew Smith book and I’m told his others are different. But I don’t think I’ll be reading any more of him for a while.
I read Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think for book club. It’s not a book I would have chosen by myself because it’s nonfiction and it’s not a topic I am really interested in. And as with most non-fiction books, I found this, too, to be too long when it could have been written like a long short story.
The point he makes in the book is interesting and I don’t disagree with him but I don’t think he showed enough data and most of what he talks about is anecdotal in my opinion. Nonetheless, if you’re one of those “the future is doomed” people, this might be interesting to read for another perspective. I think these topics are never so simple that we can think black or white but having a range of thoughts is always important.
I read The Martian because it was on the top of the list for 2014. I read it all the way back in January and it was one of the best books I read. The audiobook was fantastic. I promptly recommended it to both Jake and David (both of whom loved it, too.)
I then recommended it to everyone I know.
At this point, the book is super famous thanks in part to the movie, of course. (Which is also wonderful.) This is more of a science book as opposed to science fiction. But it’s also funny. It reads easily and quickly. One of my favorites from the year.
Highly recommended.
I read Norwegian by Night for book club. It was a relatively quick read and an unusual book. I haven’t read that many books that take place in Norway and even though there wasn’t a lot about Norway in the book, it was still interesting to have some.
There are so many layers to this book. It’s about friendship, marriage, war, family and more. It’s not a book I would have ever picked up on my own. I don’t regret having read it but I also wouldn’t just openly recommend it unless you think the story is appealing to you.
But I’m still glad I read it.
I read Unspoken because a friend recommended it and it sounded interesting. However, I read it almost a year ago and now that I am sitting down to write about it, I can’t remember much of anything. I feel like that’s significant right there. I remember it being okay enough to go through but not so great that I wanted to read the others. I think part of the problem is that I’ve spent a bunch of time reading a lot of Young Adult books and now that I have read enough, new ones don’t impress me as much as the old ones used to. So my bar is higher.
And while this wasn’t disappointing, it also didn’t really pass the bar enough to make me read the next books in the series.
I read The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August because amazon recommended it and it looked interesting, unlike anything else I’ve read in a while.
I like to find really different books. I still remember how much I’ve enjoyed The Golem and the Jinni.
As it turned out this book wasn’t as good. But it was still really different and quite good. I like finding books that are really different because I feel they are really rare. So when I do, even if they are not as good, I appreciate the author trying something different.
Though this one was good.
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projects for twenty twenty-four
projects for twenty twenty-three
projects for twenty twenty-two
projects for twenty twenty-one
projects for twenty nineteen
projects for twenty eighteen
projects from twenty seventeen
monthly projects from previous years
some of my previous projects
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