It's Friday again (1/22)

[ufcasey]

Is it just met or was this week both a short week and a long week all at the same time? 
Anyways, what did you read this week?

QOTW:
What is one of the worse books you have read that you did not pick for yourself (aka it was a book gift, or a book club pick, or it was a book for school etc)?

[abs]

Super duper long week!!

This week I have been all over the place on reading. I read a super smutty book, am re-reading Vampire Diaries, and am reading Because of Winn Dixie at DD's request.

QOTW: I would like all the house of my life I spent in high school reading Charles Dickens back please and thank you. I don't know which was worse--Great Expectations or A Tale of Two Cities.

[travella]

I finished The Last Trial by Turrow last night. I plan on starting Station Eleven tonight.

QOTW: That's difficult. There were quite a few book club books I could not finish and a few high school and college books I remember disliking. I cannot really make a distinction as to which one was the worst though.

[meowmaps]

I read The Cousins this week. I enjoyed it! I hope I remember enough of it by the time we chat for book club. I think I will.

QOTW: I don't actually know if it's a bad book but I remember being sick during my school unit for The Scarlet Letter. I ended up doing the CliffsNotes because I just couldn't catch up otherwise. The same thing happened to me during our reading of Pride and Prejudice. I know the story inside and out from seeing so many iterations on screen but I've never actually read the book!

ETA: Reading later responses I'm reminded of how much I HATE Lord of the Flies. I can't remember what grade it was assigned reading (6th or 7th...?) but to this day I cannot fathom why that book would be taught to children. HATE. 

[tacokick]

Concrete Rose by Angie Thomas

The Lost Family: How DNA Testing is Upending Who We Are by Libby Copeland

The Secret to Superhuman Strength by Alison Bechdel

People Like Her by Ellery Loyd

Surviving the White Gaze: A Memoir by Rebecca Carroll

What You Never Knew by Jessica Hamilton

Uncanny Valley by Anna Weiner

Something Like Beautiful: One Single Mother's Story by asha bandele

Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah

QOTW: The Hobbit in sixth grade. I know people love it but I just didn’t care and found it so tedious. I really hate reading any assigned book though.

[ally]

I finished nothing this week, but I am currently reading:
The Great Believers, Rebecca Makkai
Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times, Katherine May

It was a hard week to find time to really dive into a book.

QOTW:
There are many.  I hated Serena and Wicked (though I do love the musical), but I finished them, as I think it is important to do so for book club.  Patricia Cornwell's book Blowfly started by willingness to stop reading books I didn't like, it has been a huge relief!  In high school I didn't finish Red Badge of Courage and just determined I could do poorly on the exam and still get a good enough grade in the class.

[tacokick]

Jan 22, 2021 13:12:37 GMT -5 abs said:

Super duper long week!!

This week I have been all over the place on reading. I read a super smutty book, am re-reading Vampire Diaries, and am reading Because of Winn Dixie at DD's request.

QOTW: I would like all the house of my life I spent in high school reading Charles Dickens back please and thank you. I don't know which was worse--Great Expectations or A Tale of Two Cities.

Ha! We did Tale of Two Cities in the eighth grade and I kind of enjoyed it. Beheadings! Knitting! I created Lucie’s diary for a project and aged the paper with tea.

[dontlook]

Jan 22, 2021 13:12:37 GMT -5 abs said:

Super duper long week!!

This week I have been all over the place on reading. I read a super smutty book, am re-reading Vampire Diaries, and am reading Because of Winn Dixie at DD's request.

QOTW: I would like all the house of my life I spent in high school reading Charles Dickens back please and thank you. I don't know which was worse--Great Expectations or A Tale of Two Cities.

My kids school did a school-wide read of Because Of Winn Dixie at the end of the year during COVID. Teachers took turns reading the chapters. We really enjoyed it. I hope you guys do too.

This week I read The Boy In The Striped Pajamas: 5 stars. I don’t cry easily and I sobbed at the end.

QOTW: I’m sure I read worse books but the first one that popped into my head with the Starless Sea. I think it was a book club read from here or at least recommended from here. I read like a quarter of it and I had no idea what in the world was even happening. I’ve read bad books but I’ve never been that lost before.

[abs]

Jan 22, 2021 15:07:38 GMT -5 dontlook said:

Jan 22, 2021 13:12:37 GMT -5 abs said:

Super duper long week!!

This week I have been all over the place on reading. I read a super smutty book, am re-reading Vampire Diaries, and am reading Because of Winn Dixie at DD's request.

QOTW: I would like all the house of my life I spent in high school reading Charles Dickens back please and thank you. I don't know which was worse--Great Expectations or A Tale of Two Cities.

My kids school did a school-wide read of Because Of Winn Dixie at the end of the year during COVID. Teachers took turns reading the chapters. We really enjoyed it. I hope you guys do too.

This week I read The Boy In The Striped Pajamas: 5 stars. I don’t cry easily and I sobbed at the end.

QOTW: I’m sure I read worse books but the first one that popped into my head with the Starless Sea. I think it was a book club read from here or at least recommended from here. I read like a quarter of it and I had no idea what in the world was even happening. I’ve read bad books but I’ve never been that lost before.

That is so neat! DD’s teacher read it to them last year as well and DD loved it so much. She re-read it a month ago or so and asked me to read it as well so we could talk about it. Can’t say no to that!! It is a great book so far. I love that my DD has turned in to such a reader as well.

[litskispeciality]

I started Firefly Lane and My Dark Vanessa.

QOTW: I was just talking to my dad about this. I haaaated the Hound of Baskerville in 8th grade. For some reason I couldn't understand it, and we spent a long unit reading, studying it. I wish my teacher had explained that like Shakespear it's not easy to understand. She otherwise said I was a strong reader, so it was hard to understand why I couldn't read this.

[charlatti]

I’m almost finished with A Woman in the Polar Night, a 1934 memoir by Christiane Ritter. I’m enjoying it, but I think I prefer my polar books with more science or adventure.

QOTW: I did not enjoy Billy Budd, my only Melville attempt. But hate-reading it with my tiny AP lit class was memorable and kind of fun. (The teacher didn’t hate it, but I think she was amused by how much we all did!)

meowmaps, I can’t imagine Lord of the Flies for middle schoolers. I teach it with high school sophomores — definitely not content or allegory that a sixth grader needs!

[estrellita]

I finished Outlawed by Anna North and loved it! Recently started The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. Interesting so far but I'm not too far in yet.

I'll have to think more on that question.. the only books I STRONGLY disliked have been ones I chose to read. Maybe Lord of the Flies as someone else mentioned. I don't remember liking that one lol.

[tacokick]

Jan 22, 2021 17:13:50 GMT -5 turbo said:

tacokick, you had a few books on your list I’ve never heard of but that intrigue me from the titles - do you mind telling me what you thought of Something Like Beautiful, Surviving the White Gaze, and The Lost Family? All sound intriguing.

Something like Beautiful was okay but her first memoir about her relationship with her husband (they met when she was a volunteer and he was in prison) was a lot better. It is really about her and her feelings than any real details about what happened so you sort of have to piece the narrative together yourself.


Surviving the White Gaze was good—interesting adoption story but I do feel like she glossed over a few things that I would have liked to know more about. Somewhat oddly her description of her meeting her husband and their wedding is different than it was in an article I read years ago by her about a similar topic. It was an ARC so maybe they changed it for the final book but I thought that was strange. Minor details (in one account she was very pregnant with her son at the wedding, in the other she wasn’t pregnant at all; some minor details about how they met changed) but it made me wonder what was else was tweaked. Both the article and the book were written under the same name (she did change her birth mother’s name for the book but used her actual name for earlier pieces) so it was easy for me to look up the old magazine piece and see if I had remembered it correctly. I had! The book was still interesting but the changes were at the end of the book and kind of colored my opinion.

The Lost Family was good. Lots of info about how DNA testing works and changed over the years. It also follows a family who didn’t get the results they expected (not in a traumatic way, they were just surprised) which was a good thread to tie it all together.

[meowmaps]

Jan 22, 2021 17:33:37 GMT -5 charlatti said:

I’m almost finished with A Woman in the Polar Night, a 1934 memoir by Christiane Ritter. I’m enjoying it, but I think I prefer my polar books with more science or adventure.

QOTW: I did not enjoy Billy Budd, my only Melville attempt. But hate-reading it with my tiny AP lit class was memorable and kind of fun. (The teacher didn’t hate it, but I think she was amused by how much we all did!)

meowmaps, I can’t imagine Lord of the Flies for middle schoolers. I teach it with high school sophomores — definitely not content or allegory that a sixth grader needs!

It was definitely disturbing and that’s obviously stayed with me over the years! Maybe I should read it again as an adult. I wonder if I’d see it through different eyes.

[Deleted]

I am reading The Knockout Queen by Rufi Thorpe. I was expecting something fairly light and breezy and it is...not that. I'm about half way through and I like it. I literally have no idea where it's going.

QOTW-I dont know. There are a few books everyone loves that I just couldn't get I to, but I cant think of one that was a gift or assigned that I hated. Good question!

[minzy]

This week, I finished Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows by Balli Kaur Jaswal.

QOTW: I read The Scarlet Letter in high school and didn’t care for it. But for some reason I loved Ethan Frome and Antigone.

[rainbowchip]

I finished Bad Feminist by Roxanne Gay. It wasn't what I expected.

QOTW: I had to read My Antonia in school and I remember it being pages and pages of description of wheat fields. I hated it!

[mrspez07]

I’m listening to Nothing more Dangerous by Allen Eskens, it’s pretty good. Reading the Glass Hotel, still interested in how it’s going to end.

QOTW: Not remembering high school books well, I had to turn to good reads for some low starred books for IRL book club. 1st one was Isabel Allende’s Ines of My Soul and the 2nd was the Dinner by Herman Koch.

[Vespasia]

Earlier this week I finally finished listening to Obama's book. I basically had it playing all day Monday, which seemed appropriate.

Now I am reading Tales from the Hinterland by Melissa Albert. It's a collection of dark fairytales that was a major part of her earlier books. Some are better than others but I am enjoying it.


QOTW: I can't remember any specifics but I remember hating most of what we read in 10th grade English.

[aurora]

I can hardly remember before Wednesday anymore.

I'm reading the Glass Hotel. It's going pretty quickly.

QOTW: I hated The Catcher in the Rye. Holden was just not a compelling character, much less a likeable one. I also disliked the Great Gatsby. The characters were not people I could identify with. (Both of these are from high school, or maybe even junior high?)

In general I like the classics.

[aurora]

Jan 22, 2021 20:52:43 GMT -5 minzy said:

This week, I finished Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows by Balli Kaur Jaswal.

QOTW: I read The Scarlet Letter in high school and didn’t care for it. But for some reason I loved Ethan Frome and Antigone.

I re-read The Scarlett Letter a couple of years ago to see if it would age well. It hasn't. I came away from the second reading hating Nathaniel Hawthorne for his obvious misogyny.

[aurora]

Jan 22, 2021 17:33:37 GMT -5 charlatti said:

...
meowmaps, I can’t imagine Lord of the Flies for middle schoolers. I teach it with high school sophomores — definitely not content or allegory that a sixth grader needs!

I'm pretty sure I read it in junior high, so 7th or 8th grade. I don't remember disliking it but do remember feeling disturbed. It's really not a comfort book.

[aurora]

Jan 22, 2021 15:02:48 GMT -5 tacokick said:

Jan 22, 2021 13:12:37 GMT -5 abs said:

Super duper long week!!

This week I have been all over the place on reading. I read a super smutty book, am re-reading Vampire Diaries, and am reading Because of Winn Dixie at DD's request.

QOTW: I would like all the house of my life I spent in high school reading Charles Dickens back please and thank you. I don't know which was worse--Great Expectations or A Tale of Two Cities.

Ha! We did Tale of Two Cities in the eighth grade and I kind of enjoyed it. Beheadings! Knitting! I created Lucie’s diary for a project and aged the paper with tea.

I also liked A Tale of Two Cities! But, not most other Dickens books.