Young Jane Young by Gabrielle Zevin C+
I drug my feet on this one. I liked it and then it slowed down and I didn't like it as much. I didn't care about the characters but I didn't dislike them either. If you've not read anything by Zevin, try The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry first. I still maintain that Elsewhere is her best book.
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
I can't rate this because it's too tragic of a memoir for that. It's very interesting and, I'm sure, was incredibly emotionally painful for him to write this. Not to mention the fact that his wife finished it. If you like memoirs that are sad, you will like this. This is the only book this month that I would actually say "Yeah, you should read it".
The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon D
This was tolerable in a way. I mean, it's YA to the extreme but I saw it on the UW library shelf and, given that I'd never come across it, decided to pick it up. I skimmed a lot, granted, but I really enjoyed the insertions of different random peoples' POVs, like Irene or Hannah Winter, etc. It just fleshed out the story a bit.
If you like YA, you'll like this. If not, you can probably skip it. I never read Everything, Everything because it seemed way too YAish for me and I already had the movie preview in my head. But if you liked that, you'll probably like this.
Stranger in the House by Shari Lapena C+
I found this to be enjoyable enough at first; the promise of "thrilling" was there; I wanted to keep reading and I didn't always feel that with the other books I chipped away at this month. It's a mystery and I liked it a lot better than The Couple Next Door, her first book.That being said...I felt nothing for the characters and didn't really care about what happened. It's kind of just weak in that way. I wouldn't not recommend it, but it's not a must-read (which is exactly how I felt about The Couple Next Door).
Attempted and DNF and/or Returned:
Coming Clean: A Story of Faith by Seth Haines
This has good reviews and seemed like something I would like. It had a foreward by Shauna Niequist, which should've been my first clue. She writes in circles and I have no interest in reading her 1st world prose at this point in my life. This, as it turns out, is the same thing as a Niequist book, but written by a male. If you like her, you'll like this. (I like her recipes; I don't like her prose.)
(Still) currently reading:
I have multiple books on my currently-reading list...I think my goal should be to go into 2018 with no half-read books. These percentages also aren't updated because I haven't opened these books in so long that I don't know where I am actually am and my Kindle is...over there somewhere and I'm not about to get up to get it.
I had big plans to finish a few of these over Thanksgiving break. I was having lunch with Scott on the Wyoming campus, and he and and his friend were getting ready to go to some super secret special collections room at the library to look for top-secret hydrology documents (or something). They asked if I wanted to see the library and told me I could check out as many books as I wanted under Scott's name. As they pointed me toward "popular fiction" and went off toward the math/science section (that I wasn't allowed in), I thought "Oh, this is where the plebeians browse...the non-math/science majors" (I've always been a non-math/science major).
I ended up with a stack and everything else got pushed to the side.
Aside from that I have 3-4 unstarted books on my Kindle and I wished I liked to read these days. I don't know what my deal is...I'm in a completely different place in my reading life than I was a year or two ago.
What's the worst book you read this month?
Linking up with Jana and Steph!
