Hindsight this week —
It’s been an unusually slow week for me this week! Thankfully two of my library books with looming deadlines were eligible for renew so I won’t be forsaking sleep any more than usual to finish my towering TBR pile. These last seven days I finished was The Heart by Maylis de Kerangal and The Sisters Chase by Sarah Healy (at 11:45 last night–finished by the skin of my teeth!). The Heart left me with that hangover feeling you get from eating rich food. Like nothing else will ever taste that good and I’m not sure I want to eat anything else for a while. Such a beautiful book, but it made me slow to dive into the next read. Review should be up within the next two weeks.
Finishing The Sister’s Chase put me closer to my goal of actually reading my Book of the Month picks so I can decide whether to stick with it. I’m *thinking* I am but jury is still out. I picked my BOTM last night and should be getting Goodbye, Vitamin as my July pick soon. I was torn between it and American Fire which I’ll be putting on hold soon at the library.
For listening, I am entranced by Bahni Turpin reading The Hate U Give and love it to the extent you can love a book that rips your heart out and shows it to you while you weep over the gaping hole in your chest. Bahni Turpin also read A Piece of Cake by Cupcake Brown–she did such an excellent job in that reading that I keep having to remind myself that Starr is not Cupcake. Turpin wins rewards for her audiobook reading and I can absolutely see why. She’s phenomenal.
In other media, I finally saw Wonder Woman and loved it. I don’t have the background or bandwith to analyze it like I do books so I won’t try. I’m sure it’s not perfect but I don’t care. Loved it. The day after I posted last week’s note about GirlBoss, Netflix announced they canceled the show. I liked it enough to plan to watch the second season but can’t say I’m heartbroken. As awful as Sophia comes across on the show, Netflix has gotten criticism for downplaying some of the truly awful stuff she did to other people. I think that’s bumped #GirlBoss the book back down a few pegs in the TBR pile.
Library additions to the growing TBR pile this week include Salt Houses (kindle), The Hate U Give (audio by Overdrive), All Our Wrong Todays (recommended on Insta after I posted about Dark Matter), and Anything is Possible.
I fell into the black hole of online book-related-things including being the last one to know that Goodreads has a giveaway section where you can enter to get free books, including some very recently and soon to be released books. I’ve got approximately a one in ten thousand chance to get some of those but you know I will post here if I do!
I also discovered LibraryThing, a site/app that lets you log your books so you know what you actually own (and it also has a free book section!). In logging all 600+ of my books (including kindle books) I discovered I have at least ten duplicates of books that I didn’t realize I had. And this is why I need to log my books. At least this way I’ve got a stack of books for my local Little Free Libraries. (Side note: when I’m not reading, I help with Austin Lost & Found Pets which works to reunite lost pets with their owners. This sometimes includes chasing/trapping lost pets. I caught a little guy on Tuesday this week that had been out and about for a week in my neighborhood before we got him. He was an excellent house guest for the day I had him except for when he peed in my car…don’t worry. The books that were waiting for the Little Free Libraries soaked it all up….and no, of course I didn’t donate those).
Foresight for the coming week–
Review for Killers of the Flower Moon will be posted Tuesday and The Heart will be coming later in the week. Though it will be a while til they are posted, I’m hoping to schedule posts a few weeks out and have The Fall of Lisa Bellow, Lincoln in the Bardo, I Found You (audio), and The Sisters Chase to draft reviews on this week as well. I’m on the wait list to get a copy of Dark Matter back into my hot little hands so I can review it soon. I’ve read these all recently, it’s just hard to review a book that isn’t in front of me. If you’ve got a preference for which review gets posted next of those choices, I’d love to know in the comments below.
I’m cracking open The Stars are Fire by Anita Shreve today with A Bridge Across the Ocean next because it’s about to expire on my Kindle. The Red Sox are in Dallas on the 4th so boyfriend and I got tickets to head up and see the boys play. With Tuesday and Wednesday off, I should be able to have a pretty good reading week and *might* even get to start Among the Ten Thousand Things as a third book this week. Boyfriend is currently burning through Sleeping Giants so that we can listen to the sequel Waking Gods while we drive to and from Dallas which could take anywhere between six and sixty hours.
I’m also hoping to get a review cranked out for the What Should I Read Next podcast–both because I want to include bonus posts on where I get my books and things I’m listening to and because Anne Bogel is doing a giveaway of her Bullet Journal kits and I’m a sucker for free bookish-stuff. I’ll either link or repost my review here this week.
What are you reading next? Have suggestions about books I should read? I’d love to hear from you.