Hindsight this week —
Started Salt Houses this week and it has slowed me way down. I got this one in Kindle and I think it might have been one of those books where I would have pushed through and kept going and finished chapters before bed if I could see how many pages were left. The estimate minutes on my Kindle is not nearly as helpful. It’s good and engaging but there isn’t a lot of action–there are large (5 years or more) passings of time between chapters and it is in those spaces that action seems to happen. The chapters are life after the events–after the Six-Days War and the fighting in Beirut. It’s interesting but if the action is in the gaps, you can see why its moving a touch slowly. I’ve got Lilac Girls on deck next because there are 47 people who have it on hold after I do (not an exaggeration–the library system tells me how many people I’m leaving hanging if I keep it past the due date) and it’s due soon.
I did actually finish Hillbilly Elegy on audio. It. Is. Awful. Review coming but it’s been a while since I read such a politically biased book, even if it is memoir.
The only library acquisition was The Almost Sisters for the MMD Book Club discussion in August. My other main acquisition this week was the advance reader copy of Anne Bogel’s Reading People: How Seeing the World Through the Lens of Personality Changes Everything. I’m in the launch team getting to review it early and I’m super excited to jump in. Other folks in the launch team have been posting tidbits on Facebook and it looks fantastic. There are some amazing pre-order bonuses for offer on that link. If you’ve ever listened to Anne on the What Should I Read Next podcast, you know how melodic her voice is–I’m excited for her audio on the book.
Foresight for the coming week–
Posts for either The Hate U Give or Inside Out and Back Again will be posted next week along with a player to be named later. I have both of those done but don’t want to have two YA books in the same week, even if their age-intended audiences are very different. I’ve got Hillbilly Elegy, The Fall of Lisa Bellow, Dark Matter, and Lincoln in the Bardo in the queue to review so…most likely one of those. I need to actually do what I’ve been saying for weeks and build up a few posts. I’ve got the books, I just need to find the time.
I need to knock out Reading People and finish Lilac Girls this week. Push has come to shove and I’m about to be shoved over the cliff of having library fines if I don’t!
What are you reading next? Have suggestions about books I should read? I’d love to hear from you.