February Book Log - open to all!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just finished both Lessons in Chemistry and Remarkably Bright Creatures. I'd give them both 9/10, with a slight edge for Lessons in Chemistry but they were both truly enjoyable.

I also just finished both of these and agree with your ratings!

Also recently finished:

These Impossible Things: 9.5/10
Anxious People: 6/10

I'm 2/3 of the way through The Mothers and am enjoying it so far. I will post a rating when I'm done.

We have been housebound with Covid and I have had more time to read than in at least a decade.

I loved Anxious People. LOL

[Anonymous]

Just finished Age of Vice. So good, intense, and eye opening. How does anyone survive in India??

[Anonymous]

Just read Exiles by Jane Harper 7-8/10

Jane Harper is a must-read for me; I love her writing. This book was good, but it made me sad. I love a great mystery but I'm really tired of reading about bad things that happen to women and there's a lot of overlap between the two.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just read Exiles by Jane Harper 7-8/10

Jane Harper is a must-read for me; I love her writing. This book was good, but it made me sad. I love a great mystery but I'm really tired of reading about bad things that happen to women and there's a lot of overlap between the two.

This is an endemic problem with crime / mystery literature.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just read Exiles by Jane Harper 7-8/10

Jane Harper is a must-read for me; I love her writing. This book was good, but it made me sad. I love a great mystery but I'm really tired of reading about bad things that happen to women and there's a lot of overlap between the two.

I also read Exiles. I would go with an 8/10. I liked it, esp. the sweet side plot. I didn't find the "bad things that happen to women" exploitive in the book -- just realistic -- maybe that actually makes it sadder. I hadn't read The Lost Man, but I did once I finished Exiles. I also really liked The Lost Man - 8.5/10. The relationships between her characters in all of her books seem very authentic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just read Exiles by Jane Harper 7-8/10

Jane Harper is a must-read for me; I love her writing. This book was good, but it made me sad. I love a great mystery but I'm really tired of reading about bad things that happen to women and there's a lot of overlap between the two.

I also read Exiles. I would go with an 8/10. I liked it, esp. the sweet side plot. I didn't find the "bad things that happen to women" exploitive in the book -- just realistic -- maybe that actually makes it sadder. I hadn't read The Lost Man, but I did once I finished Exiles. I also really liked The Lost Man - 8.5/10. The relationships between her characters in all of her books seem very authentic.

I’m glad you and pp are done - I have it on hold at the library so hopefully this means I’m 2 spots closer to getting it!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I just finished Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. I am in the clearly small minority of those who didn’t care for it.

I agree. It was ok. 6/7 out of 10. But not amazing. Depressing which I think always generated critical acclaim for some reason.

[Anonymous]

I've recently finished a reread of To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf which is a 10/10 star read.

I also finished The Land of Green Plums by Noble prize winner Herta Müller. This book was challenging to read as it takes place during Ceausescu's reign in Romania. Reading about the lives of 4 young people living in a police state is uncomfortable. And Muller keeps the reader at arm's length, possibly because it was too painful to really delve into? I'd say 7/10 for enjoyability, but I'd bump that up to a 9/10 as a book that is important to read.

[Anonymous]

Devil in the Grove by Gilbert King - 10/10 stars

If you read narrative nonfiction, I highly recommend this. It's a pulitzer prize winner from 2012 and will open your eyes to the conditions for Black people in the Jim Crow South. This book follows the accusation of 4 Black men for rape of a white woman and then details their trial and outcomes. It's horrifying, but worth reading as it really informs what we are still trying to scrape our way out of as a country today. Thurgood Marshall was involved in this case, so there is some bio of him as well and the Supreme Court cases the NAACP was working on in the 1940s/50s.

You'll never see Florida as a happy vacation state again. There's been (and likely still is) real evil in our country.

[Anonymous]

I finished the book "The Color of Lightening" a week or so ago. It is written by Paulette Jiles. Last month I read another book by the same author and reported about it here on DCUM. This book was "eh". I give it a 4. It was about white people and black people and native American people all trying to get along -- or not get along -- in Texas right after the end of the civil war.

I like this author. Her writing style appeals to me. If I can find more books written by her that I can download from the library, I will.

[Anonymous]

PP here. I also read "Irish Eyes" by Mary Kay Andrews this month. I give it a 7.
I discovered Mary Kay Andrews about two years ago. I have been reading her books ever since. I downloaded about 20 of her books about 8 months ago. However, now that I have read about 15, they are getting a bit repetitive. They are always along the lines of "woman was living an orderly life until suddenly some circumstance comes along and her life blows up and then she has to reinvent herself." Sometimes someone gets murdered along the way.

In the book "Irish Eyes", a woman who used to be a cop but now runs a house cleaning business goes to a Saint Patrick's day party with a former cop buddy. Afterward, they stop by a liquor store and the cop buddy gets shot while she was waiting in the car.


Oh . . . someone on last month's book log wanted us to have DCUM book club names. So I picked my DCUM book club name: Destin boomer. Because I live near Destin in the Florida panhandle and I am a boomer.

So last month I read What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarity, a civil war era book by Paulette Jiles, and this month was Paulette Jiles again and Mary Kay Andrews.