ARC, Books

Book 667: Firewall – Eugenia Lovett West

I’m not going to lie, when I read the first line of this one I got super nervous. The last time I read a book from a non-major publishing company that was set in Boston, I was VERY disappointed. So it was a good thing I was pleasantly surprised by this one—especially as it came from the same publicity company!*

Firewall is actually the third in the Emma Streat mystery series and I wouldn’t usually take on a book mid-series. However, West’s story of not getting published until she was in her 70s and then again in her 90s (Concord Monitor News) was intriguing and the blurb for this was just interesting enough to tempt me.

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Updates

September Recap 2019

Kicked off the end of August and beginning of September with a long weekend up in Acadia National Park, Maine so thought I’d include a beautiful sunrise photo to wrap up the month.

Work has moved into full speed for the season, so I’m surprised I read as much as I did. I’ve also spent time reading longer articles on my to be read list (aka my Instapaper app), some of which have been there since January! I’m reading plenty of longer pieces (45-90 minutes reading time) and the good part about it is that I’ve read a wide range of articles from (closeted) gay neo-Nazis to millennials as the burn out generation, and weirdly this puts less stress on my goal of reading a nonfiction book every month.

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ARC, Books

Book 651: Sorted – Jackson Bird

I am always on board for reading anything from LGBTQ+ authors, but particularly nonfiction (memoirs, biographies, autobiographies, etc.). So when the publisher reached out about this one I downloaded it (and somehow actually got to it the week it was published).*

Overall, I really enjoyed this. I mean page one is a J.K. Rowling/Albus Dumbledore quote, of course I was going to enjoy this. I had no idea about Bird’s connection to Harry Potter (or that the Harry Potter Alliance, now known as Fandom Forward even existed)! This being said, I wasn’t totally enamored with the book and didn’t figure out why that was until roughly 80% of the way through the book.

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Books

Book 648: Honestly Ben – Bill Konigsberg

This one was pretty forgettable for me, which is sad because it’s actually a good book. I think the problem is that I read Openly Straight, basically the first half of this book/story a little over five years ago. If I would’ve read these back to back I would’ve probably had much stronger feelings about this one.

Let’s start with what didn’t work: the swimming analogy. The book opens with Ben, the protagonist, going to swimming lessons for the first time and sinking to the bottom of the pool. Konigsberg uses this as a very clunky metaphor for Ben’s life and thoughts at the start of the book. I was honestly hoping it wouldn’t resurface at the end of the book—which isn’t totally fair because I would’ve been more pissed if he didn’t complete the metaphor—but it did and it just made me sigh and shake my head.

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Books

Book 642: Evvie Drake Starts Over – Linda Holmes

I discovered Linda Holmes years ago when I started listening to NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour and reading what used to be called Monkey See but was re-branded recently to match the podcast. I’ve always appreciated her views and the people she brings to the discussion, so when she started to drop hints that she was working on a novel I was SUPER excited.

I was also psyched to see the public radio shout out so early in the book, “She took down one of two public-radio fundraising mugs from the cabinet, leaving behind the one with the thin coat of dust on its upturned bottom.” (10). There’s another scene when Evvie is trying to decide what to do with some money and the list of charities she wants to support is just perfect.

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