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Book 723: Once You Go This Far – Kristen Lepionka

I wasn’t sure what to expect going into this. When the publisher reached out to me about an ARC I liked the synopsis and loved the fact Lepionka co-hosts a podcast called “Unlikeable Female Characters”, so said sure why not.*

I don’t know if it’s worth noting (but clearly, I’m noting it), the first thing I noticed on Goodreads is I am one of very few men who have read this book prior to release. I don’t know if that means we’re not the target audience or if it was just a coincidence, but I thought it was interesting.

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Book 657: Pride and Prejudice and Mistletoe – Melissa de la Cruz

Once again, the dangers of allowing me loose online or in a library result in me reading a random book I found while looking for something else specifically. Don’t get me wrong, I would’ve read this eventually—it’s a Jane Austen fan fiction/retelling/spinoff with reverse genders set at Christmas.

Honestly, I wasn’t even aware Pride and Prejudice and Mistletoe existed, but since I found it on Overdrive I’ve found out that they made a Hallmark movie of it and you KNOW I will be watching that this coming curl up inside because it’s cold outside and watch questionable movies season.

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Book 654: Law and Addiction – Mike Papantonio

Unlike, Off the Grid, this book was worth saying yes to the publicist.* This book was engaging, a fast read, and had characters that were written well and believably realistic from the newly minted idealist lawyer Jake Rutledge to the West Virginia county chief prosecutor Eva Whistler, all of these characters felt real.

Law and Addiction is the story of Jake Rutledge and his battle against the opioid epidemic and big pharma after his twin brother dies of an opioid overdose. And, honestly, you couldn’t get more timely with a book release with all of the news stories about Purdue Pharma (Google News search) and the crackdowns in Boston after a corrections officer was attacked via Boston 25 News.

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Book 533: Ready Player One – Ernest Cline

This is one of those books that has been on my metal list to look into since it came out. For some reason though, I had lumped it into the same sort of release period as Ender’s Game and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and boy was I surprised when I realized it was written and released in 2011. I knew I would get to the book some day, but the movie release in the next few months, preview embedded at the end of the post, my desire to read the book increased dramatically.

I didn’t read it quite as fast as I read some of the recent Jane Austen fan-fiction, but I did get through this one pretty quickly. I found the writing simple enough to breeze through and my vague familiarity with a lot of the 1980s pop culture helped (even if I did have to google quite a few). The strengths, for me at least, were the realistic vision of where we could easily end up as a society within the next few decades if something similar to OASIS actually becomes reality. The OASIS or, “The Ontologically Anthropocentric Sensory Immersive Simulation was a big place.” (48), is in essence an internet/game type situation that could include full or partial body immersion. Cline isn’t the first, nor will he be the last to write something like this. It’s a dystopian vs. utopian, good vs. evil, privacy vs. corporate consumerism story for the ages.

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Book 434: Eligible (The Austen Project #4) – Curtis Sittenfeld

I really should’ve read Trollope’s Sense and Sensibility and McCall Smith’s Emma before I read this, but getting my hands on a galley/uncorrected proof copy from Random House* sort of made that a moot point. Perhaps I’ll read the other two soon as I loved this one so much. Needless to say, I’m proud I saved it for as long as I did. I always get a bit nervous when an uncorrected proof has in big bold letters “DO NOT PUBLISH YOUR RESPONSE BEFORE X DATE.”

I mean I get it, but it’s still like you want me to read this book and then keep mum on it. How is that possible!? It’s 1) Jane Austen, 2) ADORABLE and 3) hilariously modern in a way only Jane Austen can be made so. I’ll go ahead and warn you that this response isn’t all sunshine and roses though. I will say I was hesitant of the name-change from the original, but as I read it I was convinced with the okay-ness of it. There is a tangent later that is not a reflection of the book, but of some of the stupid comments I’ve seen recently of The Austen Project adaptations.

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