Last July Friday reading 7/28

[charlatti]

What have you been reading this week? 

QOTW: What does it take for you to call a book bad? If you do star ratings, for example, what does a one-star rating mean to you?

[tacokick]

The Rachel Incident by Caroline O'Donoghue (I liked it but it could have been a little better)

Cutting Teeth by Chandler Baker (silly but fun)

How Can I Help You by Laura Sims (entertaining and creepy)

Looker by Laura Sims (creepy)

Listen for the Lie by Amy Tintera (eh)

At Least You Have Your Health by Madi Sinha (so heavy handed and made little sense)

Windfall by Wendy Corsi Staub (at least it was quick to read)

QOTW: timely! I had two this week. Books that I’m not only sorry I read but I’m sorry they got a book deal.

[Vespasia]

I started Atalanta by Jennifer Saint over the weekend. I like what I have read so far but unfortunately this week has been super busy so I haven't really had time to read.

QOTW: I don't think I have ever given a book one star! I usually don't score my DNF books and I can't imagine finishing anything that bad. Even the terrible books I have read somewhat recently (The Last Apothecary for example) were 2 star reads. The plot was absolutely ridiculous and annoying but at least the grammar was fine? I think I am pretty generous with my scoring though. 

[travella]

I DNF'd The Librarian of Burned Books by Brianna Labuskes. I just got to the point I dreaded picking up the book. I finished Tomorrow, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin (3*, not bad for going in thinking I would DNF it right away). I'm currently reading Homecoming by Kate Morton.

Qotw: 1 star is a book that is so bad that I cannot force myself to finish it or I finished it and found it to be so bad that it was a complete waste of my time.

[charlatti]

I finished The Puzzle Master, which started out well but turned into a mess. Now reading an old Michael Connelly, The God of Guilt — I’ve been enjoying these this summer.

QOTW: I generally just quit reading books I don’t like, but if I do finish and it’s a poorly crafted story plus less than adequate writing, I might give it one star. If I just don’t like a book, it’s hard for me to think of it as objectively bad.

[estrellita]

I finished 2 books in the last week:

Heir of Fire - 4*
Part of the Throne of Glass series. The story is picking up and I'm planning on starting the next book tonight!

Weyward - 3*
I thought I'd like this one more, but I didn't. It was just ok for me.

QOTW: I don't think I've ever given a 1. I'm probably more generous and easy to please than most, haha. The ones I've given 2s are ones I finished, but really really disliked for various reasons. The few I can think of were incredibly boring, or had an unreliable narrator. After a couple unreliable narrator books, I decided I hated them enough to avoid them now!

[Gato]

I finished The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz. It was just okay. I had the "twist" figured out pretty early on, and that made the rest of the book a slog.

I've had a dry spell, good-book-wise. Let's hope Kate Atkinson's Shrines of Gaiety will break that.

QOTW: 
The writing has to be bad at the sentence level, the plot totally predictable, and the characters tired clichés. Usually, I don't even go near those kinds of books, so not many one-star reviews for me. 

[dearprudence]

Finished Tripping Arcadia, and I really enjoyed it. One of those "stay up late to finish" kind of books.

Still reading the Summer Guests, it's a little disjointed and slow going.

Started The Woman in the Library about a mystery writer who is writing a mystery about a mystery writer who hears a murder while in the Boston Public Library. I'm really enjoying it and almost don't want to finish, but also dying to read more.

Also started The Bostonians thinking it would be a novella. It's not. It's a satire about the women's rights movement in the 1800s and the fight over one particular woman by a feminist and her chauvinistic cousin.


QOTW: What does it take for you to call a book bad? If you do star ratings, for example, what does a one-star rating mean to you? Bad for me usually involves poor writing, unlikable characters, or poor plot development. I don't think I've ever given a 1 star, a 2 star is my latest and I usually reserve it for a book that makes me viscerally angry while reading it.

[krystee]

I finished The Wishing Game, which might not be a five-star book but was a five-star experience for me and exactly what I wanted at that time, so I rated it that way anyway.

I am now reading Legends and Lattes, a cozy fantasy, after hearing it raves about on a podcast. It is not at all my usual type of book and the cover is really odd, but after the first few pages of wondering what I was getting myself into, I think I’m going to like it!

I also read The Marriage Act, which made me think about where AI is going to take us that we don’t want to go!

QOTW: I almost never give one star unless I just can’t even finish it. Two star books I have rated include November 9 for glorifying a manipulative and aggressive guy and The Wives for an incredibly lazy ending with an unreliable narrator that basically rendered everything I had read earlier pointless. Also, I Know Who You Are by Alice Feeney, whose twists and ending were so ludicrous and ridiculous that I genuinely thought it was a parody of thrillers. Terrible dialogue also earns two stars. Practice dialogue you write out loud! If it sounds stilted and ridiculous, don’t use it! For example, people do not use people’s names every single time they speak to them!

[Vespasia]

Jul 30, 2023 8:52:49 GMT -5 krystee said:

Also, I Know Who You Are by Alice Feeney, whose twists and ending were so ludicrous and ridiculous that I genuinely thought it was a parody of thrillers.

I had a similar experience with Rock Paper Scissors by the same author. One of the more memorably ridiculous books that I have read in the past few years and a two star review from me.