Friday 7/3 reading recap

[litskispeciality]

Don't want to step on toes, just didn't see one yet. What did you finish or read this week? What are you currently reading? Hope you all have a good (long) weekend, and can read at some point.

QOTW: Thinking back to YA books when you were that age, what character did you want to be, or what series or book would you like to be a part of?

[litskispeciality]

I just started "High Achiever" it's good, but so much more in jail and detox than I thought... and "Everything We Keep".

QOTW: All this Babysitters Club stuff has me thinking back that I would have loved to be part of that club/have those girls as friends. Probably anything Jerry Spinelli too.

[dontlook]

The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne: 5 stars
I saw this book being recommended so I read the summary and decided that it didn’t sound good, but it was available at my library so I decided to give it a try. I was sucked in after the first chapter and it was easily one of the best books I read this year.

[charlatti]

I finished Valentine by Elizabeth Wetmore, which I expected to love but didn’t really like. It’s strong writing but the characters weren’t there for me. Just started Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, which seems good so far. Plenty of gothic atmosphere.

QOTW: I loved Christopher Pike, so probably one of his non-evil characters, but without the murder.

[meowmaps]

I finished Sigh, Gone: A Misfit's Memoir of Great Books, Punk Rock, and the Fight to Fit In by Phuc Tran. I highly recommend it. It's one of my favorites of the year.

I started The Herd by Andrea Bartz yesterday or the day before. I have about 100 pages left and I'm dying to get to it but it's been a busy day. It's a page-turner so far.

QOTW: This isn't YA but when I was younger I loved the Ramona series by Beverly Clearly. I liked most things by Beverly Clearly. I don't know that I'd choose to be annoying Ramona but I guess it fits since I'm the younger sibling.

[Nonny]

I just finished up Magic for Liars, am almost done with Lady in the Lake, and I just started The Starless Sea (so I guess I'll bump that thread in a week or so).

QOTW: I don't know. I read so much as a kid, that it's hard to single out a series. Mostly I was just jealous that the girls in the books I read seemed to have much stronger friendships than I ever had at that age.

[travella]

I read The Woods by Harlan Coben, 4*. I am almost finished with Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene.

QOTW: I wanted to be an au pair like the characters in the Sunset Island series. I hated babysitting, but the idea of being paid to live abroad intrigued me.

[litskispeciality]

Did John Boyne write "A Ladder To The Stars"? Because that was really good too.

I should probably add I read a lot of R.L.Stein Fear Street series, so even though I knoe the bad outcome, I'd prob be a character just for street cred. I never did Christopher Pike I think because I thouggt was a R.L. Stein rip off. Should try it as an adult.

[Vespasia]

Jul 3, 2020 20:34:40 GMT -5 litskispeciality said:

I should probably add I read a lot of R.L.Stein Fear Street series, so even though I knoe the bad outcome, I'd prob be a character just for street cred. I never did Christopher Pike I think because I thouggt was a R.L. Stein rip off. Should try it as an adult.

I think it was the other way around! 😉

[Vespasia]

I forced myself to finish The Glamourist. It wasn't terrible but it just never sucked me in.

Earlier today I started Chosen Ones by Veronica Roth. I haven't really read anything else by the author but it sounded good. I'm definitely interested so far!

QOTW: I vaguely remember wanting to be a character in L.J. Smith's Secret Circle and Vampire Diaries series. I have never watched the shows though.

[abs]

Christopher Pike was way better than R.L. Stine! I still gobbled up both like candy though along with Richie Tankersley Cusick. But yeah I didn’t want to be any of them.

I always wanted to be like Stacey in BSC. Did anyone ever read Sunnyside Friends? I desperately wanted to go to summer camp and have those experiences.

Right now I’m reading Rodham. Still. Hoping to finish this weekend.

[minzy]

Last week I finished Little Town on the Prairie (Little House #7) by Laura Ingalls Wilder with my kids; Gulp - Adventures on the Alimentary Canal by Mary Roach; and The Lost Daughters of China - Abandoned Girls, Their Journey to America, and the Search for a Missing Past by Karin Evans. There was blackface and some other BS in Little Town, so we got to have some conversations about that. The other two books were very good.

I’m currently reading three. Little House #8 with my kids. Flights by Olga Tokarczuk. It won the Man Booker International Prize and is a translation from Polish. I am more than 200 pages in and I still don’t actually know what’s going on. It’s supposed to be about travel experiences, but a lot of it is about some quirky fixations on anatomical preservations (which I’d normally like, but am a little perplexed by here). The third book is The Feather Thief - Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century by Kirk Wallace Johnson.

QOTW: There was a little bookstore near my mom’s office and my sister and I would go there all the time to buy books. I remember liking a series called The Treehouse Times. We formed a club with two friends and tried making a newsletter after reading those, haha. I also remember trying to find mysteries so we could be like Nancy Drew and solve them.