This was an all around great week. The kids were really into the Oscars this year and Lucy turned 10 and I got lots of good reading in. What more could I ask for?
I finished up my reread of Eureka Street, and found, for the most part, that it does hold up. I’ve always been so glad that I happened on this one way back when, because it’s pretty off the radar. I’m almost positive it was a staff pick at a local bookstore at the time, so, yay for staff picks! Very engaging novel about the life and loves of 20-something guy in Northern Ireland, a little long but so charming.
After that, I finished The Wicked City. I am a big fan of this author, but I have to admit I had a hard time focusing on this one. I still don’t know if it was me, or the book, or a little of both. I think I’ve just come to expect to fall in love with her main characters because they are typically so great. She may have just set the bar too high for herself. I did like this but I didn’t feel completely invested in it like I did with her others.
I had no trouble at all focusing on Lincoln in the Bardo. Oh my god, this book! I’m so fascinated by this, I mean, it’s such an unusual premise and beautifully executed. Takes place in a single night, narrated by like a hundred different characters, most of them ghosts, about Abraham Lincoln and his dead son…it has the potential to be a total train wreck but it was amazing. I’ll be really interested to hear from my friends who like audio books because this is constantly shifting narrators, I’ve heard the audio is a love it or hate it. I loved this so much.
I am less in love with Forever, Interrupted. I have enjoyed her other books, and I’m really looking forward to her next one, but this didn’t do it for me. Good writing and interesting story but this narrator is such an ass. I tried really hard to bear with her because her husband dies in an accident in the first chapter, but she’s still unbearably self involved and smug and immature. I don’t feel bad saying that because half the book is flashbacks to before the accident and she’s pretty awful then too. I still like this author and won’t hold this one against her.
Today I am absolutely delighted to have picked up All Grown Up. I am crazy about Jami Attenberg and she’s going to be in Seattle ON MY BIRTHDAY and I’ve been dying for this to come out…am I making my extremely high hopes for this one clear? Well I’m already halfway through and I love it and it’s exactly the kind of thing I love to read and her voice is amazing and I’m so in love with this so far it’s a little bit embarrassing. Prepare to be hearing about this one from me for quite a while.
