Books

Book 950: Kaleidoscope – Cecily Wong

Book cover of When someone from the publisher reached out about Kaleidoscope, this line caught me: “This book is heart-wrenching and hopeful and the characters truly shine on the page. It’s one of those books where I wish I could read it again for the first time all over again. And I’m so happy that you get to.”

And I downloaded a copy almost immediately, but of course sat on it for a few months, allowing me to forget about the blurb and the subject and go into this completely blind.*  This approach, if you’ve followed me for a while, sometimes works for me and sometimes it doesn’t. This time it sort of worked mostly because the intro was a little abrupt and different from the rest of the story, but that’s on me, not the author.

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Books

Book 924: Tell Me Our Story – Anyta Sunday

Book cover of "Tell Me Our Story" with Amazon Affiliate linkAfter reading Anyta Sunday’s adaptations of Jane Austen’s novels I knew I wanted to try one of her other contemporary novels without the Austen framework so when this arrived in my inbox I requested a copy of it.*

Tell Me Our Story is the tale of uptight, heavily burdened Jonathan, who stayed in his hometown to care for his younger sibling (gender-neutral, never clearly stated but doesn’t have to be) after their parents died, and David O’Hara, who fled town when they were younger because of his dad and, as we ultimately learn, Jonathan. They’re in some sort of social media competition and that’s the premise of the novel.

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Books

Book 826: His Compass (His #2) – Con Riley

Cover art of "His Compass" with Amazon Affiliate linkI was a little surprised to find that there were already two additional books released in Con Riley’s His series. I read and adored His Horizon this time last year and had kept an eye out for the follow-ups, but either missed the review opportunity or totally spaced on them.

So, when I realized they were on Kindle Unlimited I grabbed both for this up-coming holiday and am glad I did. His Compass is the story of Captain Tom, who we briefly met in the first book and Nick, the seemingly wayward irresponsible deck hand who has his own backstory that provides the crises of the novel.

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Book 742: Crime Dot Com – Geoff White

Book cover of I honestly don’t know how people exist without being paranoid ALL THE TIME. When I first said yes to this after the publicist reached out, it was like 95% because the author’s first name was Geoff and 5% because the subject was interesting. And then I found myself completely absorbed with this book.*

Now I’m not saying we’re totally screwed, but I mean we’re not really that far from being totally screwed and White does a really good job of explaining all of it. He takes an in depth look at the start of cybercrime with the quaint “Love Bug” virus (Wikipedia) to the state sponsored hacking/cyber assault that nudged us into the rotting cesspool of Trumpism that is the US right now.
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Book 588: Crashed – How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World – Adam Tooze

What a tome. I requested a copy of this from the publisher back in August 2018 after reading this review from the NYTimes.* It took me three months to get to it and another month-and-a-half to actually read it! And it was worth the read, now I just need to read the “Framing Crashed” posts on his website to see what else I missed!

There are some mixed reviews on Goodreads, some people think it’s boring (uh duh – hello finance, politics and history), some think they’ve written better books or articles (get out of here self-promoters, nobody wants you), and others, like myself, appreciated the staggering amount of ground covered by Tooze in this work.

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