Hindsight this week —
Picked up the pace a bit with reading this week, but it did help that I was reading some lighter and shorter books. I finished The Stars are Fire, When Dimple Met Rishi, and Inside Out & Back Again. I wound up only having a day to knock out a draft of The Stars Are Fire before I had to return the book–I really need to plan a little better to finish books before the day before they’re due. Blog posts for those are coming towards the end of the month or beginning of next. I adored Inside Out & Back Again. I’m really not familiar with novels in verse outside of Inside Out and Brown Girl Dreaming but I’ve loved them both and need to find more. Inside Out also showed me I know absolutely nothing about the Vietnam war, thanks to only ever getting somewhere into the sixties in history class before the end of the year every year (and, even if we had gotten that far, we wouldn’t have gotten the perspective of someone from Vietnam). I’m taking it as a sign that I need to read The Sympathizer or, you know, a non-fiction book. But we’ll start with The Sympathizer.
I’ve got Goodbye, Vitamin as my Book of the Month pick and applied for a few ARCs through LibraryThing, so I’ve got some new books on the way along with a pile waiting for me at the library. I’ve almost hit that spot where I’m getting books faster than I can read them. Oh, bookworm problems.
I’m a little more than 3/4 of the way through The Hate U Give and I’m simultaneously mourning the coming end and wanting it to go faster so I know how it ends. Boyfriend and I listened to the first half of Waking Gods on the drive to an from Dallas to see the Sox this week. It’s rare that I double-listen to audio books but these are as different as two books can be and I didn’t think I could sell him on jumping into The Hate U Give in the middle. Not sure if I’ll review Waking Gods or not–it’s ok but it’s not as amazing as the first book so far. (Is the second book in the series ever as good as the first?)
The only library addition this week was Hillbilly Elegy which is on deck after The Hate U Give and a catch up episode or two of What Should I Read Next. Speaking of WSIRN, Anne Bogel is currently running a promotion to boost reviews of the podcast. Winners will receive a free deluxe reading journal kit from the Modern Mrs. Darcy store. I actually enjoyed writing my review, thinking through my recent favorite episode and how I’ve seen the podcast evolve. I’ll likely post a bonus post here in the coming weeks with my review expanded since it is a source of many of the books on my TBR pile.
Foresight for the coming week–
Posts for I Found You, a British mystery/thriller, and The Stars Are Fire should be posted next week with The Sisters Chase, When Dimple Met Rishi, Lincoln in the Bardo, and The Fall of Lisa Bellow on deck after that–I hope to knock out all those drafts next week and get myself a little stocked up on reviews so I’m not trying to finish posts the day before they’re due (except, of course, this one).
I’ve had A Bridge Across the Ocean and Among the Ten Thousand Things on my Kindle from the library so long that they’ve already expired and I can’t update my Kindle til they’re done. At least one of those is the plan for this week along with Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Stout. I adored Olive Kitteridge but could not stand My Name is Lucy Barton (so. whiny. no. plot.) so we’ll see where I land on Anything is Possible. Either way, it’s closing out my reading challenge category for three books by the same author. That one isn’t due as soon as some others but I’ve been delinquent in the MMD book club and I need to go ahead and read that one so I can engage in the discussion boards.
What are you reading next? Have suggestions about books I should read? I’d love to hear from you.