These were DID NOT FINISH audiobooks:
A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
Real Murders by Charlaine Harris
My Sister's Grave by Robert Dugoni
How to Talk to Anyone by Leil Lowndes
I may go back to the Harris book. I haven't decided yet. I returned the other three because they were just not good. I did learn that "Ove" is pronounce "Ooo-va".
Also a DNF: Who Do You Love? by Jennifer Weiner. It was from the library and I didn't have time to finish it and didn't feel like renewing because I didn't "love" it enough. It wasn't terrible so maybe some other time. ...also, I had no idea but Jennifer Weiner used to work for the newspaper in State College.
And I had a student named Jennifer Weiner a few years ago.
----------------------------------------------------------
What did I read? Uh....truthfully, my attention span lately has been super short. Like, I can make it through a podcast and that's about it. I've really been into keeping up with my podcasts lately.
I've been reading The Headless Ghost by R.L. Stine at school. You might ask why I read a Goosebumps book to kids when there's better-quality stuff available, but they love it. I will read aloud to my class as long as they enjoy it and this class does enjoy it. Then there's a whole catalog of other Goosebumps books for them to move onto on their own. It never fails to impress me how completely off their predictions are about what's going to happen next. Each Goosebumps chapter leaves off with a cliff-hanger of sorts and they get very disappointed when I put the book away.
I know I'm doing God's work when kids tell me they're going to download this on their Kindle and read it over the weekend to find out what happens next.
Anyway.
I listened to The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson. This was a solid C for me and wasn't about how not to care (what I was secretly hoping it'd be about). It was about how to choose what you care about carefully because if you waste energy on too many things, you'll end up caring about nothing.
That's what I got out of it. I liked the first half better than the second half. I wouldn't not recommend it.
I just finished The Things We Wish Were True by Marybeth Mayhew Whalen over the weekend. It was a solid story. Kind of Moriarity-ish but with a Southern twist. Maybe not as enthralling, but it did keep me wondering. What I was mostly concerned with though was that they never ever mentioned anyone's age. I spent a lot of time preoccupied, wondering how old these kids were supposed to be. And I'm assuming the trio of main characters (Jencey, Everett, and Bryte) were about 30? I liked it. B-
