I feel like I was really busy this week, but I did manage to get lots of reading in. I’m now officially counting down until summer. (40 school days left!)
I finished The Circle over the weekend. Killer ending! This was really good overall even though it’s a bit clunky in spots. I mean, Mercer’s name might as well be Cassandra, and the second appearance of the shark was embarrassing, but I very much enjoyed it. I’m pretty curious how the movie will be, it could go either way, but I think Emma Watson will be amazing.
After that, I read The Sellout, and I’m still on the fence about that one. At first I was hating it; the writing style felt like some guy who just never stops talking and it was so irritating. I stuck with it and it grew on me and had some really hilarious bits. I don’t know, it was at turns boring, and at turns thought provoking, and sometimes funny, and sometimes really annoying, and I don’t know that I’m really the audience for it anyway. Kind of a big shrug from me here.
Had pretty much the opposite feelings reading Harmless Like You. I was loving it in the beginning and really wanted to see where it went. It did not go anywhere interesting, unless you think it’s interesting how much harder we are on mothers than fathers. So, I guess that is kind of interesting, but also annoying. It also lost me for good with a bit with a cat that was very schmaltzy and heavy-handed, so the lesson this week may be, do not use animals as plot points.
There was more clunky animal stuff in The Female of the Species! What is up with this? I was really disappointed with this one. It was kind of Heathers meets Dirty Weekend, which sounds amazing, except Heathers is funny and Dirty Weekend is not YA, so that must be where things went wrong. I don’t think this ever established the right tone; could have been great but it was just so-so and fell apart in the end.
Now I’m about a hundred pages into A Gentleman in Moscow. I liked Rules of Civility very much and I’m looking forward to sinking my teeth into this one. Very good so far, hoping it holds up and definitely hoping we don’t have any animals as metaphors coming. Has not been a good sign this week!
