As the Page Turns (the Book Thread)

[quartz]

Has anyone read anything by Colleen Hoover? Doesn't sound like my thing, but as I was going through the NY Times Book Review yesterday I noticed that she had not only the top 5 books under paperback fiction, but 4 more in the top 15! I'd never heard of her.

Also, just finished the new Reacher, No Plan B, and if you are a Reacher fan and/or have read many or all including the good and not so good, then I can happily say you'll probably like this one

I had never heard of Colleen Hoover a year ago either, and now we have dozens and dozens of copies of all her books in the store. Some are in the fiction section and others are deemed romance. I’ve no interest in reading her, but her stuff is flying out of the store, mostly with the early twenties - early forties women. Her best selling titles are the ones that deal with abuse and domestic violence.

 

[MsZem]

Has anyone read anything by Colleen Hoover? Doesn't sound like my thing, but as I was going through the NY Times Book Review yesterday I noticed that she had not only the top 5 books under paperback fiction, but 4 more in the top 15! I'd never heard of her.

Hoover started out self-publishing about a decade ago, had a lot of success pretty quickly, and really took off on TikTok these last couple of years. I haven't read anything by her, either, but apparently people find her books really compelling.

 

[Prancer]

I haven't read any Colleen Hoover yet, but I thought this New York Times profile was interesting and it made me put one of her books on my (non-urgent) TBR list.

 

[Habs]

I've read two Colleen Hoover books. They were okay. Easy and quick reads. Compelling enough that I wanted to know how the stories ended, but I didn't love them so much that I'm rushing out to read more.

 

[genevieve]

I just finished I'm Glad My Mom Died and holy shit, all the praise for this book is well deserved. I had never watched any Nickelodeon shows, never even heard of Jennette McCurdy before this autobiography started getting lots of press, but none of that keeps this book from being riveting.

I actually bought this book for my sister for xmas but couldn't help reading it before I sent it off. I was so careful handling it

Besides this, my reading has stalled out a little. I've had 4 or 5 books out from the library that I just get get into, or though. I have to finally give them back and I hope there are some more invigorating pre-holiday releases available.

Some books that I actually finished:

Our Missing Hearts, Celeste Ng - interesting premise, a lot of suspension of disbelief.

Back to the Garden, Laurie R. King. It's been many years since I read one of King's novels! I liked this one, although I wonder if she's setting up a new series with this detective, because there are a lot of unanswered questions about the protagonist.

Small Game, Blair Braverman - starts off like a spoof of reality survival shows but gets deeper - but also doesn't 100% know what kind of book it wants to be.

 

[Allskate]

The Many Daughters of Afong Moy, Jamie Ford. A book with multiple characters in different times, about several descendants in one matrilineal line. I had to put it down for a while, because there was just so much trauma. Glad I came back to it. Honestly, I would have welcomed longer stories about any of the women besides the main protagonist, who was a lot less interesting than she should have been, and structure of epigenetic memory that the book centers on was the weakest part. The protagonist lives in Seattle in 2045, and there are some nice nods to both the city, and the likely climate of an almost-coastal city in a few decades, but Jamie Ford now lives in Montana and clearly hasn't been back in a while, because he describes the International District as a neighborhood untouched by development in 2045 - and it's been rapidly gentrifying for the last 5 years.

I really liked Jamie Ford's first book, so I was excited to read this one. I borrowed the e-book from the library. It has been such a slog. This has never happened to me before, but the library took it back before I finished it. I'm not sure why it was such a struggle to complete. Part of it probably was all the trauma, but part of it probably was because I could not get into Ford's form of epigenetics/memory. I think that the exploration of intergenerational trauma in fiction can be done very well. (I loved Homegoing.) But, I just wasn't into it in this book.

OTOH, I loved "Lessons in Chemistry" by Bonnie Garmus and read it very quickly. I loved the themes she explored and so many of the characters. (And I loved to hate some of the other characters.) I think this book resonates with a lot of women. Everyone I know who has read it really likes it.

“One Italian Summer” by Rebecca Serle.

I never heard of this book until Isabeau Levito mentioned in an interview that she loves reading and pulled out this book and said that was what she currently was reading. She's a book lover. I knew I liked her.

ETA: I bought the Audible Black Friday deal. If anyone has any recommendations for great books for Audible, please let me know. I'm wondering how good the audio version of Nathan Chen's book is. The sample is read by his sister.

 

[Prancer]

OTOH, I loved "Lessons in Chemistry" by Bonnie Garmus and read it very quickly. I loved the themes she explored and so many of the characters. (And I loved to hate some of the other characters.) I think this book resonates with a lot of women. Everyone I know who has read it really likes it.

 

[oleada]

Everyone in my book club was raving about it and meanwhile I was too.

I’ve been in a book rut, until I got into This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub, which I loved. The main character travels back on time on her 40th birthday to her 16th, and sees how different choices affect her future. I’ve been in my feels about my upcoming birthday so this hit me right in the gut. The main character’s relationship with her single father is just wonderfully done. Plus, I love the New Yorkiness of it. I miss New York.

 

[Allskate]

Everyone in my book club was raving about it and meanwhile I was too.

What was it that you disliked about it?

 

[Prancer]

What was it that you disliked about it?

I didn't dislike it, just didn't love it. As I posted back a page or so ago: I just finished Lessons in Chemistry, another book that received rave reviews. The waiting list was long. I was really looking forward to reading it and put some other books aside the minute it was available. And...meh. I can see why people like it, but it's just too much of a fairy tale for me.

 

[Allskate]

but it's just too much of a fairy tale for me.

I can see that. I assume that you're talking about more than just the ending, but including the ending.

Spoiler

I saw an interview with Garman. She said that some people don't think it's a happy ending (or happy enough), but I thought the opposite. All things considered, it ended quite well and rather unrealistically well. And, although there are some horrible things that happened to her, including the sexual assault and harassment and sexism and losing her partner, those things are not dealt with in great depth. I also thought that some people might not like the narrative voice of six thirty, though I did.

I still really enjoyed the book, but I can see why you and others might not. It's being adapted into a series starring Brie Larson. I'll be curious to see what they do with it.

 

[oleada]

What was it that you disliked about it?

I guess it seemed so…unrealistic while being realistic at the same time. She was always right, everyone else wrong. Of course her and her husband and kid are brilliant and everyone else is an idiot. I just found it so tedious. I like the idea, but not the execution.

 

[Prancer]

I can see that. I assume that you're talking about more than just the ending, but including the ending.

Yes, all of it.

I guess it seemed so…unrealistic while being realistic at the same time. She was always right, everyone else wrong. Of course her and her husband and kid are brilliant and everyone else is an idiot. I just found it so tedious. I like the idea, but not the execution.

This. Other things, too, but mostly this. It's like it wouldn't be enough to have a brilliant woman who suffered from sexism in the sciences, which really happened and deserves attention; no, we have to have a woman who is so brilliant she has to be a virtual caricature to make the point.

 

[clairecloutier]

An article in the Washington Post has recommendations from parents of 100 notable children’s books:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/06/kids-books-recommendations-list-culture-war/

A lot of our favorites are on here. (Including the Little House books —which are described aptly as “more complex and more morally ambiguous about the settling of the American West than I could have ever imagined”.)

 

[Baby Yoda On Skates]

I just finished the audiobook for The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna and it was utterly perfect. The romance was between a grumpy librarian and a witch who hides herself behind a sunny exterior. The secondary cast of characters were delightful and the kids weren't plot moppets. I am suffering from book hangover now.

 

[Tesla]

NM

 

[rfisher]

While I'm patiently waiting for the 6 books I have on hold from the library (they'll all release at the same time as usual, I downloaded an anthology about bad ass women witches. Except the authors are idiots. The common theme in the short stories is footwear. Nobody can ride a motorcycle wearing stilletos. Nobody can run in stilletos. I mean really? One thing you have to admire about JD Robb is that she never ever would put Eve Dallas in narrow toed, pointy heels while chasing the bad guy. I have a headache from rolling my eyes. I've also reached the point only 3 stories in of just skimming. Blah, blah, blah, nothing happens, Ooooh look at the shoes, blah, blah, blah. I mean I can suspend belief about casting spells, or zombies, or reanimated dead people, but I just can't with the shoes.

 

[PrincessLeppard]

Yesterday, I finished Atomic Anna. It's got Chernobyl, time travel, flawed characters (but believably flawed), the somewhat annoying "I can't tell you this big secret" nonsense, a twist I actually didn't see coming, and the potential for the movie to ruin everything, lol.

There's a couple of errors in the book, but unless you are a Chernobyl and/or Cold War junkie like me, you will probably miss them. The one I can't believe made it through is when Anna is sitting in her lab in 1950 and looks up at the pictures of Stalin and Gorbachev. Gorby would've been 19. I think it's supposed to be Kuchartov, since she's working at the Kuchartov Institute, but who knows?

 

[Sylvia]

I came across the link to this interesting-looking book, Invention Is a Mother, that was funded by a Kickstarter:

Invention Is a Mother

My long-imagined dream of writing a novel transmogrified into a bucket-list priority after my ALS diagnosis in 2017. Invention Is a Mother is the result: a slightly sci-fi, darkly comic (satire! puns! crude humor! irreverence!) take on our product-centric culture. The plot—like real engineering proj

www.syllaballistics.com

 

[rfisher]

I think there are other Pendergast fans besides @PrincessLeppard and myself, but WTF are Preston/Child thinking? They've lost their minds with the new book. That being said, now I have to finish it just to see how they can tie all the storylines together. If they can't, they've jumped a megalodon. A really, really big one. And, I already know there's going to be a 3rd book to finish the sequence.

 

[Baby Yoda On Skates]

Are you talking about Bloodless or The Cabinet of Dr Leng? I thought Bloodless was godawful, but they redeemed themselves with the new one. As long as I overlooked the premise of how they get there, I rolled right through an arc of Dr Leng and thought it was a worthy sequel to the original Cabinet of Curiosities.

 

[Tesla]

I just finished the audiobook for The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna and it was utterly perfect. The romance was between a grumpy librarian and a witch who hides herself behind a sunny exterior. The secondary cast of characters were delightful and the kids weren't plot moppets. I am suffering from book hangover now.

I just requested this through my library.

 

[rfisher]

Are you talking about Bloodless or The Cabinet of Dr Leng? I thought Bloodless was godawful, but they redeemed themselves with the new one. As long as I overlooked the premise of how they get there, I rolled right through an arc of Dr Leng and thought it was a worthy sequel to the original Cabinet of Curiosities.

The cabinet of Dr Leng. My loathing of Constance as a character has no bounds. but, I'm only a third of the way through. I thought the original Cabinet of Curiosities was excellent. I was on vacation in DC staying at a spooky old hotel and stayed up all night reading it. I miss the early books.

 

[Baby Yoda On Skates]

The cabinet of Dr Leng. My loathing of Constance as a character has no bounds. but, I'm only a third of the way through. I thought the original Cabinet of Curiosities was excellent. I was on vacation in DC staying at a spooky old hotel and stayed up all night reading it. I miss the early books.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who despises Constance's character. The only Green I want to see is Margo.

But...that being said, she was bearable in this book, because she had a new focus that wasn't Pendergast.

 

[Matryeshka]

Colleen Hoover is something of a craze at my school--the junior English teacher went out and bought all her books because the girls were asking about them and she was so excited they were reading and talking about books. She said they were marginally better than Twilight but harmless. Typical new adult romantic schlock.

I had no intention of reading them but the senior theology teacher went on a weird diatribe about them in both the teacher's lounge AND his classes. One of the senior boys told a junior girl it was porn and she was going to hell for reading it. So now I am going to read them, and let my students see me reading them.

I liked Lessons in Chemistry, but I didn't love it. It was a little too pat, a little too all bases covered at the end. The book that everyone raved about that I was about was The Plot. Unless you don't read often, HOW DID YOU NOT KNOW WHO IT WAS FROM THE SECOND THE CHARACTER WAS INTRODUCED. HOW. I kept thinking I would be wrong, there would be a twist...but nope.

 

[Prancer]

Colleen Hoover is something of a craze at my school--the junior English teacher went out and bought all her books because the girls were asking about them and she was so excited they were reading and talking about books. She said they were marginally better than Twilight but harmless. Typical new adult romantic schlock.

I had no intention of reading them but the senior theology teacher went on a weird diatribe about them in both the teacher's lounge AND his classes. One of the senior boys told a junior girl it was porn and she was going to hell for reading it. So now I am going to read them, and let my students see me reading them.

I read It Ends with Us about a week ago. I didn't find it painful, but I won't be reading any more Colleen Hoover. I felt quite old and jaded while reading; it's definitely a young person's idea of romantic.

There is quite a bit of sex in the book, although I would say there is more frequency and less description and detail than some.

The book that everyone raved about that I was about was The Plot. Unless you don't read often, HOW DID YOU NOT KNOW WHO IT WAS FROM THE SECOND THE CHARACTER WAS INTRODUCED. HOW. I kept thinking I would be wrong, there would be a twist...but nope.

I thought the same. I mean, who else was there?

Some other stuff I have read lately:

This is What It Sounds Like: What the Music You Love Says about You: Susan Rogers rose to fame as the sound engineer and producer for Prince and became one of the few very successful female producers in the 90s music business. She is now a psychologist who teaches about the psychology of music at Berklee (not Berkley). The book will not really tell you what the music you like says about you; it is more of an analysis of music and the way it moves people in general. She talks about a LOT of songs, some familiar, some not. While it's not exactly a scholarly textbook, this is not a light and gossipy read about music business. I found a lot of it interesting, but I don't think most people would.

Off the Edge: Flat Earthers, Conspiracy Culture, and Why People Will Believe Anything: I read this because I have had some Flat Earther students in the past couple of years and I have found it completely baffling. I still find it baffling after reading the book, but I did find the history of Flat Earthers interesting and I maybe understand the psychology of people who believe in such things a little better. Not much.

Give Me Your Hand: I had told myself that I would never read another Megan Abbot book after reading the one about gymnasts, but I read a review of this one that suckered me in. That will not happen again and I will not read another Megan Abbott book. This time, the ambitious and gifted but damaged young women who are pursuing their dreams but at what cost are scientists. The main impression I have after reading these books is that Abbott really hates women.

Slow Horses: I found this on a list of books that writers recommend. Apparently there is a series on Apple TV? I had never heard of it before I found the list. In any case, Slow Horses are failed spies who have really screwed up at some point in their careers and been sent to work for a branch where careers go to die in hopes that they will resign. And of course, a case comes along that gives them a chance to redeem themselves. It took me some time to get into this book, as it is what I call Urban London--lots of modern British slang and names of people and places I don't know--but I really enjoyed it once I got past the first couple of chapters. This book is the first in a series and I am moving on to the next.

Alias Emma: Another British spy book, but one that is quite different. Emma is given her first big assignment--to get the son of some targeted Russian spies across London to safety without being caught in the world's most camera-heavy city. A fast, light, predictable read that will almost certainly be made into a movie if it hasn't been already.

 

[PrincessLeppard]

I just finished Dan Festerman's Safe Houses and really enjoyed it and also found out some Cold War info I didn't know and must now do extensive research on. No matter how good the book was, I still think that men should not write lead female characters...

Twenty-three-year-old women do not deliberately seek out 53-year-old men to "pick their brains about spycraft" after sex. (I realize the age difference had to be there for the plot to work, but maybe go talk to a young woman about why she might date someone that much older? I dunno.)

 

[her grace]

Give Me Your Hand: I had told myself that I would never read another Megan Abbot book after reading the one about gymnasts, but I read a review of this one that suckered me in. That will not happen again and I will not read another Megan Abbott book. This time, the ambitious and gifted but damaged young women who are pursuing their dreams but at what cost are scientists. The main impression I have after reading these books is that Abbott really hates women.

I also read Abbott’s gymnastics book and decided that was enough. Interestingly, her books are discussed in Text Me When You Get Home, a kind of social history of female friendships. In that book, the author argues that Abbott has created these complex female relationships that aren’t just queen bee and wannabes or the stereotypical negative portrayals of female friendships, and all I could think was “Did we read the same book?” I wouldn’t at all say that Abbott is positively portraying young women or showcasing enriching friendships.

 

[rfisher]

Speciesism, like racism, imperils humanity and the planet - MAHB

New Book: Speciesism in Biology and Culture - How Human Exceptionalism is Pushing Planetary Boundaries. The idea that unique species exist and that humans are supreme contributes to the environmental crisis.

mahb.stanford.edu

This is an amazing book and I recommend it for everybody interested in sustainability of life as we know it. You don't need a background in biology to read and understand as it is multidisciplinary and the writing is not focused solely on the scientific community, albeit, most of them should read it. The book is published open access. More and more researchers are doing this when they feel they have an important global message.

 

[rfisher]

I may have reached my limit with J.D. Robb/Nora Roberts Eve Dallas series. Her most recent book is flat out lazy writing. She does 2 a year and typically one of them is a throw away and the other is somewhat better. This was a throw away. She had no plot to speak of and just repeated the same dialogue over and over and over to fill the publisher's word count/page requirements. Nora, I think you've maxed out. If the next isn't much better, you may get shifted to the no buy/library wait list.