Hindsight / Foresight August 13, 2017


Mark Solarski

Hindsight this Week

Yesterday was the first day I had off in literally thirteen days–I had a brief due at work and worked a usual workday’s worth of hours last Saturday and Sunday.  Yesterday I didn’t set an alarm (slept in til 8:30!), went to Half Price Books, watched baseball, and got about halfway into my ARC of Girl in Snow.  I would have gotten farther but I found myself glued to my phone, watching the atrocities go down in Charlottesville.  UVA was the other prestigious university in Virginia (I went to William & Mary), so it was surreal to watch the rioting, the initial lack of adequate police response to protect the Black Lives Matter and other counter-protestors, escalating to the death, and then the president’s weak-sauce, half-assed condemnation of both sides.  Girl in Snow is SO very good and I probably could have flown through it yesterday but for being glued to my phone and angry Facebooking.

Speaking of ARCs, it’s an embarrassment of riches over at my house.  I mentioned last week that I got Girls Made of Snow and Glass and Trell.  I also got approved on NetGalley for ARCs of Jessamyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing, and Girl In Snow.   And, of course, I already had the ARC of Reading People for Anne Bogel’s Launch Team.  Because those all come out soon (or just came out), the blog will be heavily skewed towards ARCs for a few weeks starting soon.

With work being nuts, the only book I finished last week was The Alice Network.  It started a little slow and I was afraid at first I’d gotten another Lilac Girls, but it quickly picked up.  It wasn’t quite on the level of The Nightingale, but similar to that, it made me want to read some nonfiction on Louise de Bettignies, aka Alice Duval.  I did start and read a few chapters of Priestdaddy but it was so good, I decided to go ahead and return the library copy and just buy my own copy so I wasn’t rushed in reading it.

I picked up Since We Fell and Eleanor Oliphant is Complete Fine from the library to add to the towering TBR pile.  Boyfriend and I are almost done with Waking Gods and I’ve only got a few hours left in Born a Crime.

I’d be remiss not to remind you about the amazing bonuses that are still available if you preorder Anne Bogel’s Reading People.  The subtitle is “How Seeing the World Through the Lens of Personality Changes Everything” and is Anne’s story of how digging into the 7 personality frameworks changed her for the better. The book explains how you can put those personality frameworks to work to change your life, work and relationships. You can go to ReadingPeopleBook.com to take a free quiz to see what 9 reading personality best describes you–I got the Insider and it pegged me to a “T.”  And, because its all Anne Bogel, came with reading recommendations for my reading type.

If you want to dive deeper, Anne made a class that you can dive deeper into all 9 types and she gives book recommendations for each type. You can get this class free with a pre-order of the book. You can also get a free download of the audiobook (Anne recorded it!).

Foresight for the coming week

I should finish Girl in Snow Tuesday if not today then its on to Girls Made of Snow and Glass.  Despite their similar titles, they’ve got NOTHING in common so it will be a nice change of pace.  Girl in Snow is a murder mystery where Girls Made of Snow and Glass is YA fantasy.  I will have to pick a new audiobook this week.  I started listening to Hum If You Don’t Know the Words because I love books Bahni Turpin reads, but couldn’t get into it.  A bunch of other folks in the MMD book club raved about it after I set it aside, so I may go back.  I’ve also go an Audible credit burning a hole in my pocket that I need to decide what to use it on.  I’ve heard good things about The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie but I also just learned Bahni does Underground Railroad so I may return the physical copy I have of that one and read the audiobook instead.

Have suggestions for what I should read next? I’d love to hear them in the comments!

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