Books

Book 727: We Contain Multitudes – Sarah Henstra

I think I saw this on some bookstagram post and liked the cover and blurb enough to request it from the library. I had no expectations going into it, but I can tell you I was NOT expecting to have the air pulled out of my lungs constantly through the last half of the book.

Seriously though, the only thing I can compare it to is when you’re sobbing so hard and you can’t catch your breath and you just keep gasping trying to breathe but you’re only getting enough oxygen to keep sobbing. Jo and Kurl’s story was brutally beautiful.

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Books

Book 660: Song of Susannah (The Dark Tower #6) – Stephen King

This series might be getting a little too meta for me.

Don’t worry, I’m going to finish it. I mean I’m thousands of pages in and only one book and two novellas left, but seriously this book definitely messed with the idea of reality in a way that pushed multiple fictional worlds into what I’m assuming is supposed to be our world because Stephen King exists in it, but he might exist in all the worlds because he’s the storyslinger. So. Many. Confusing. Thoughts.

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Books

Book 650: We Are Lost And Found – Helene Dunbar

This was an achingly beautiful book and I’m glad I stumbled across it after I saw someone else had read it. I can’t find the blog where I first read about it, but if it’s you let me know and I’ll add a link to your review! It took a while for my local library to get it, but because it’s a sleeper/quite book I was able to keep it for two check out periods and actually absorb it.

Set in NYC in the early-1980s We are Lost and Found takes a look at one teen’s coming out and coming of age (sort of—it’s only a year) as the AIDS crisis begins to unfold. There were some parts that I wasn’t a fan of (hello to my old nemesis, no quotation marks) and for some reason Part 2 really dragged for me—it took me two weeks to read that portion, but Parts 1 and 3 I read at a lightning pace.

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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 614: Wolves of the Calla (The Dark Tower #5) – Stephen King

In general, I am LOATHE to enjoy a book as slow as this, let alone a 7(+) book series, but this one is good, really good.

I think the biggest issue I have with this book is how quickly it ended. Some of this is of course due to the Amazon Kindle flaw of telling you have 8-10% left in the book when really you have 1-2% and the other 8-9% of those pages are bonus content. But, the rest of it has to do with this having the first true cliffhanger in the series. [This might not be true as I can’t really remember the endings of the others, just they all blend together.]

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