Books you read this summer
![[Post New]](/jforum/templates/default/images/icon_minipost_new.gif){kind=icon}
Anonymous
+1. I wasn't expecting to like it so much, but I also read it in 2 days. |
Anonymous
He also has a book by pick up artist Tucker Max so.... really what more needs to be said? |
Anonymous
| A Brief History of Seven Killings |
Anonymous
|
Girl on the Train
Station Eleven Boys in the Boat Thunderstruck |
Anonymous
|
The Girl on a Train by Paula Hawkins
The Silent Girls by Eric Rickstad The Gone-Away World by Nick Haraway Cinder by Marissa Meyer The Valley of Amazement by Amy Tan Hunger Games Trilogy by Susan Collins Burning Bright by Tracy Chevalier |
Anonymous
| Summer may be over, but I wanted to recommend "The Blue" by Lucy Clarke. |
Anonymous
How did you enjoy it? Considering reading it next, but it looks quite long. |
Anonymous
+1 Please let us know what you thought. It just won the Man Booker. |
Anonymous
|
I read Florence and Giles by John Harding this summer, and I loved it. It is almost a retelling of The Turn of the Screw (Henry James story about a Victorian governess who arrives at her new post at a wealthy, absent man's country estate to care for/educate his weird wards, children Flora and Miles. There might be a haunting at the estate, OR there might be some degree of madness in the characters). John Harding tells the story from the point of view of the girl child, who he has renamed Florence. Harding's Florence has a distinctive voice, and if you love novels set in creepy, Victorian country house settings, with governesses and absent parents, you would love this. I did. I'm frustrated that I've read every book of this genre I know of, so I'm thrilled to find a new one.
But then, this past week I discovered Harding's newest novel, The Girl Who Couldn't Read, which continues the creepy Victorian orphan's story: now she's a ward in a Victorian mental asylum. This novel is narrated by a new doctor in the asylum, whose dilemma (not a spoiler: he lets us know this from the beginning) is that he isn't really a doctor, but is an escaped criminal who murdered the actual doctor on a stagecoach, and then assumed that doctor's identity and clothes so that he could take the doctor's place in the new job the murdered doctor had been traveling to take up: physician in a mental asylum. The new "doctor" takes a liking to mental patient Florence, who claims she can't read, and talks the leading physician into allowing him to treat Florence alone, putting her in improved quarters away from the other mental patients. Confusion and Victorian creepiness ensues. The ending is a nice twist. You don't need to have read Florence and Giles to love this one, but if you love creepy Victorian novels, you'll want to read that one too. |
Anonymous
+1 |
Anonymous
|
Here's my list:
1. Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels - all four books -- all four are worth reading 2. The Paris Architect - read for book club and loved it 3. Did You Ever Have A Family by Bill Clegg -- difficult subject but very well written 4. Who Do You Love by Jennifer Weiner -- do not recommend 5. The Good Girl by Mary Kubica -- recommend 6. Eight Hundred Grapes by Laura Dave - predictable but a light read 7. The Engagements by J. Courtney Sullivan - some of the storylines were more interesting than others |